we do not belong to ourselves
Cloud Atlas was a very complex, thought provoking, interesting, and EXCITING (!) film. Thus, I can't fully articulate how I feel about it right now. Especially because people haven't seen it yet and though I doubt I'd spoil anything (it's a really weirdly structured and narrated film), it's still one of those movies you should just see for yourself. Unspoiled. With your own opinions. Be they negative, positive, or meh. But I do have some thoughts on it, especially some thoughts regarding the whole race issue that's been thrown around.
Positives first!
- I don't really think I could express enough how impressed I am with the structure of this movie. There are something like 6 story lines happening at once that are in some ways connected but in other ways entirely independent of one another. I know Cloud Atlas was a book first but since I haven't read the book I'm going to comment on the film as an independent entity. Multiple storylines across multiple time frames is a ballsy move for any story in any media. The Wachowskis managed to make it feel coherent and they managed to find a kind of loose narrative to connect them all together. At some points skipping from one story to another broke the tension and ruined really great build up but I can forgive that. There was no real way around it given the way they did the movie.
- The action is fantastic. The futuristic dystopia storyline has the most action of the 6 and it's very Wachowski. It's smart, it's cool looking, it's edge of your seat exciting, and it's clean. You see the action without confusing camera angles and it's paced and timed perfectly to feel pertinent to the story and integral to the plot. They haven't had a movie out in so long I'd forgotten how well they do action. Or special affects for that matter. I hope that this movie re-launches their careers because a new Wachowski action feature is well overdue. Hey. Maybe THEY can direct that Justice League movie coming out some time in the future. Although I'd prefer they do original material. They're one of the few directors out there I'd trust to come up with fresh material that was actually interesting.
- While heavy handed at times (or a lot of the time....) the social and political commentary in the film really tickled me. The symbolism behind the clones in the futuristic dystopia especially made me sort of excited. I'm betting the author of Cloud Atlas is a vegetarian.
- Say what you will about white face or yellowface or brown face (is it brown face still when it's a black woman playing an Indian woman...?). This movie has more diversity in its cast than any film that's come out in the last five years. I would take that proclamation with me to the bank, especially of the big studio flagships. The featured players include Halle Berry, Tom Hanks, Keith David, Doona Bae, Ben Winshaw and David Gyasi. Plus a wealth of minority supporting cast members, a sweetly done gay storyline, and old people doing stuff other than being old.
- Speaking of Ben Winshaw, he is an acting genius. Really. He's like Gary Oldman. It doesn't occur to me how great of an actor he is because I forget I'm watching Ben Winshaw. Then I realize it was him in that role and I go, "Him? Wow. I love him." I've seen quite a few of his films now. Brideshead Revisited (C, I still have your book BTW), Perfume, and now Cloud Atlas. He has an amazing way of conveying emotion when he's not saying anything.
- James D'Arcy reminds me a little bit of a slightly less weird looking Benjamin Cumberbatch. I'm not sure what that means either. Also, he's kind of hot.
- I kind of loved the way the post apocalyptic storyline was done. The white people were the savages living in the outskirts of society and the black people were the futuristic saviors there to bring education to anyone who will listen.
- I feel like I have Lana Wachowski to thank for this but I appreciated the distinct LACK of male gaze in this film. I mean ok. I got me boobs. But I didn't feel like there was an aggressive attempt to exploit the nudity for the pleasure of a male audience. In most of the scenes it was done sensually for the purpose of sex with equal treatment to both genders or it was used to highlight the humiliation nudity can sometimes inspire.
- I also loved Tom Hanks in this movie. He's always playing nice guys or the hero or someone noble but in this movie he really got to be terrible. Like just the worst. Ahahaha. And I loved it. I mean I've always known he was a weirdo. Did you see the digital short with him and Andy Samberg where he wears a leather vest and begs us not to punch him in the dick? He's funny! I hope he plays villains more because he really has more range than what people give him credit for.
Things I'm Undecided on
- It's just the one thing actually. So there's been crazy talk about the whole "Yellowface" thing. Being Chinese, I think I have pretty good authority to discuss the issue. First off, I want to say that Hugo Weaving is a weird looking man. As a white male, he is funny looking. So. You can imagine that he becomes no less weird looking as either a Korean man or a white woman. No. Don't even try. He's even more weird looking. So is pretty much every other actor they put in the make-up chair to look Korean. But, the thing is, there is a lot of weird shit going on in this movie. Halle Berry at various points in the film play a white Jewish woman, a black woman, an Indian woman, a little old Korean man, and an indigenous slave. Hugo Weaving is a white man, a white woman, and an Asian man. Also he's some sort of weird green hallucination. You have to see it to get it. So I guess my complaint isn't really even about the yellowface. Most of my complaints were the fact that even with the make-up, they didn't really look like the race they were put in the make-up to look. ESPECIALLY the actors made to look Asian. Hugo Weaving especially. But really I didn't buy them as Korean. They just look scary. Ahahaha.
- All joking aside, the argument is that they should've just hired separate actors to play the various races. Mainly Asian actors to play the Asian parts in the White/Black actor's reincarnations. Normally I would agree. It pisses me off when Asian roles are just given to white people and revised so that the person is white. Like the DBZ live action film or that Akira remake they were thinking about. Oh! Or freakin' The Last Airbender where obviously it's a cartoon where everyone's Asian and the culture is based off of various Asian and Inuit societies. There was no reason for the white people switch, especially because M. Knight Shyamalan insisted on making everyone else in the movie Asian EXCEPT for the main cast.
- So yeah. In this case I get it. For a story this complex to work, you need the audience to connect to the characters. Only the characters are consistent and even they aren't. Not really. Their souls move from one story to another in various roles as entirely different people and in a book you can convey that. On film it would be really difficult to connect to 40 something actors playing different things in 6 different storylines. And even though the actors don't look exactly like themselves, you still recognize them to some degree and that helps you find the common thread. You can still empathize with that incarnation of the person. Hiring a Korean man to play the Korean role in one storyline would require that he be white for all the other 5 stories he's in. While I would've been totally ok with that, I can see how it wouldn't really work efficiency wise. Plus you've got the Korean actresses playing white people for consistency just as the white people play Koreans for consistency. Insisting on focusing only on the race-bending aspect and ignoring the context will only further ignorance. You have to really consider WHY it's being done in order to truly decide if it's cultural appropriation, racism, whitewashing, or none of the above.
- I think that the Wachowskis are trying to say a lot more with this narrative choice than just "we hate Asians and would rather put our black/white actors in yellowface." There's this idea that no matter who you are, your skin color or gender or sexual orientation, you will find one another in another life. We're all connected through time and space and continue to influence each other in various capacities for ever and ever. It's kind of an old idea if you think about it and several other artists have tackled the concept on multiple medias. The Fountain by Darren Aronosfky is very similar to Cloud Atlas in that way. But the way the story itself is told makes it feel fresh. The movie goes beyond the theme of love but a sort of butterfly affect. What one person decides to do in 1970 will change what happens in 2114 which will then affect humanity at some point in the distant future. That too isn't new. But then what is anymore, right?
Negatives
- Ok so the main complaint I had feels sort of nickpicky but needs to be said. The female servants in the futuristic dystopia are referred to as clones. And when one of the characters talks about a dream he has of that storyline he refers to them as a cafe where all the women had the same faces. The thing is, they obviously hired lots of Asian women and put them in as extras, gave them the same costumes and haircuts, and told them to look vacant. But they are DIFFERENT WOMEN. They aren't fucking clones. Would it have been over their budget to photoshop in the faces of the other women so that they all looked the same? Was the audience just supposed to go, "oh yes! They DOOO all look the same!" Because if the latter is the case I call foul. That is really offensive, the one thing I take offense too, more so than all the yellowface in all the movies ever. Because we do not all look the same and giving us all the same haircut and the same clothing doesn't mean we can play clones of each other. That is not ok.
- I still don't know why the post apocalyptic timeline happened. I think maybe it was in there somewhere? Or I was supposed to infer it? I don't know.
- Tom Hanks really cannot do accents.
- Like Inception or Malik's The Tree of Life, Cloud Atlas is going to be one of those movies people either love or hate. They're either going to "get it" or they're going to "not get it." I put those phrases in quotes because I hate the idea that "not getting it" means the person is wrong or stupid or narrow minded. Movies like this just connect or they don't. It's not necessarily a problem with the viewer if it doesn't. It's just that something of this scale and ambition will come off arrogant and pretentious to some, while for others it will be daring and brilliant. But it's definitely one of those movies you need to decide for yourself.
PS: Here's a great interview with the filmmakers BTW. To get more perspective on the issues I touched on.
Actually one part of the interview (part 5) really struck me. Berry and Hanks talked about it in their interview and it didn't click for me then. I didn't get it. But of course why would I? Right? Hanks asks Berry about the period dresses she's going to be wearing in her 1930s scenes. He goes, "Isn't this exciting? I love period movies." But instead of agreeing, she and Wachowski pause. That's when he understands. And I get it too. Berry would never have gotten to play a rich lady of comfort in the 1930s. As a black woman she would only ever play the servant or slave. Be it noble or heroic but only in that capacity anyway. But in playing a white Jewish woman she does inhabit this role and that's sad that historically, this is the only way she could do it, but the movie's point is that we are all each other and we influence each other and our identities aren't bound by race or gender but by our spirits.
In mentioning that though, I kind of wish Berry's white Jewish lady had had a bigger role.
Positives first!
- I don't really think I could express enough how impressed I am with the structure of this movie. There are something like 6 story lines happening at once that are in some ways connected but in other ways entirely independent of one another. I know Cloud Atlas was a book first but since I haven't read the book I'm going to comment on the film as an independent entity. Multiple storylines across multiple time frames is a ballsy move for any story in any media. The Wachowskis managed to make it feel coherent and they managed to find a kind of loose narrative to connect them all together. At some points skipping from one story to another broke the tension and ruined really great build up but I can forgive that. There was no real way around it given the way they did the movie.
- The action is fantastic. The futuristic dystopia storyline has the most action of the 6 and it's very Wachowski. It's smart, it's cool looking, it's edge of your seat exciting, and it's clean. You see the action without confusing camera angles and it's paced and timed perfectly to feel pertinent to the story and integral to the plot. They haven't had a movie out in so long I'd forgotten how well they do action. Or special affects for that matter. I hope that this movie re-launches their careers because a new Wachowski action feature is well overdue. Hey. Maybe THEY can direct that Justice League movie coming out some time in the future. Although I'd prefer they do original material. They're one of the few directors out there I'd trust to come up with fresh material that was actually interesting.
- While heavy handed at times (or a lot of the time....) the social and political commentary in the film really tickled me. The symbolism behind the clones in the futuristic dystopia especially made me sort of excited. I'm betting the author of Cloud Atlas is a vegetarian.
- Say what you will about white face or yellowface or brown face (is it brown face still when it's a black woman playing an Indian woman...?). This movie has more diversity in its cast than any film that's come out in the last five years. I would take that proclamation with me to the bank, especially of the big studio flagships. The featured players include Halle Berry, Tom Hanks, Keith David, Doona Bae, Ben Winshaw and David Gyasi. Plus a wealth of minority supporting cast members, a sweetly done gay storyline, and old people doing stuff other than being old.
- Speaking of Ben Winshaw, he is an acting genius. Really. He's like Gary Oldman. It doesn't occur to me how great of an actor he is because I forget I'm watching Ben Winshaw. Then I realize it was him in that role and I go, "Him? Wow. I love him." I've seen quite a few of his films now. Brideshead Revisited (C, I still have your book BTW), Perfume, and now Cloud Atlas. He has an amazing way of conveying emotion when he's not saying anything.
- James D'Arcy reminds me a little bit of a slightly less weird looking Benjamin Cumberbatch. I'm not sure what that means either. Also, he's kind of hot.
- I kind of loved the way the post apocalyptic storyline was done. The white people were the savages living in the outskirts of society and the black people were the futuristic saviors there to bring education to anyone who will listen.
- I feel like I have Lana Wachowski to thank for this but I appreciated the distinct LACK of male gaze in this film. I mean ok. I got me boobs. But I didn't feel like there was an aggressive attempt to exploit the nudity for the pleasure of a male audience. In most of the scenes it was done sensually for the purpose of sex with equal treatment to both genders or it was used to highlight the humiliation nudity can sometimes inspire.
- I also loved Tom Hanks in this movie. He's always playing nice guys or the hero or someone noble but in this movie he really got to be terrible. Like just the worst. Ahahaha. And I loved it. I mean I've always known he was a weirdo. Did you see the digital short with him and Andy Samberg where he wears a leather vest and begs us not to punch him in the dick? He's funny! I hope he plays villains more because he really has more range than what people give him credit for.
Things I'm Undecided on
- It's just the one thing actually. So there's been crazy talk about the whole "Yellowface" thing. Being Chinese, I think I have pretty good authority to discuss the issue. First off, I want to say that Hugo Weaving is a weird looking man. As a white male, he is funny looking. So. You can imagine that he becomes no less weird looking as either a Korean man or a white woman. No. Don't even try. He's even more weird looking. So is pretty much every other actor they put in the make-up chair to look Korean. But, the thing is, there is a lot of weird shit going on in this movie. Halle Berry at various points in the film play a white Jewish woman, a black woman, an Indian woman, a little old Korean man, and an indigenous slave. Hugo Weaving is a white man, a white woman, and an Asian man. Also he's some sort of weird green hallucination. You have to see it to get it. So I guess my complaint isn't really even about the yellowface. Most of my complaints were the fact that even with the make-up, they didn't really look like the race they were put in the make-up to look. ESPECIALLY the actors made to look Asian. Hugo Weaving especially. But really I didn't buy them as Korean. They just look scary. Ahahaha.
- All joking aside, the argument is that they should've just hired separate actors to play the various races. Mainly Asian actors to play the Asian parts in the White/Black actor's reincarnations. Normally I would agree. It pisses me off when Asian roles are just given to white people and revised so that the person is white. Like the DBZ live action film or that Akira remake they were thinking about. Oh! Or freakin' The Last Airbender where obviously it's a cartoon where everyone's Asian and the culture is based off of various Asian and Inuit societies. There was no reason for the white people switch, especially because M. Knight Shyamalan insisted on making everyone else in the movie Asian EXCEPT for the main cast.
- So yeah. In this case I get it. For a story this complex to work, you need the audience to connect to the characters. Only the characters are consistent and even they aren't. Not really. Their souls move from one story to another in various roles as entirely different people and in a book you can convey that. On film it would be really difficult to connect to 40 something actors playing different things in 6 different storylines. And even though the actors don't look exactly like themselves, you still recognize them to some degree and that helps you find the common thread. You can still empathize with that incarnation of the person. Hiring a Korean man to play the Korean role in one storyline would require that he be white for all the other 5 stories he's in. While I would've been totally ok with that, I can see how it wouldn't really work efficiency wise. Plus you've got the Korean actresses playing white people for consistency just as the white people play Koreans for consistency. Insisting on focusing only on the race-bending aspect and ignoring the context will only further ignorance. You have to really consider WHY it's being done in order to truly decide if it's cultural appropriation, racism, whitewashing, or none of the above.
- I think that the Wachowskis are trying to say a lot more with this narrative choice than just "we hate Asians and would rather put our black/white actors in yellowface." There's this idea that no matter who you are, your skin color or gender or sexual orientation, you will find one another in another life. We're all connected through time and space and continue to influence each other in various capacities for ever and ever. It's kind of an old idea if you think about it and several other artists have tackled the concept on multiple medias. The Fountain by Darren Aronosfky is very similar to Cloud Atlas in that way. But the way the story itself is told makes it feel fresh. The movie goes beyond the theme of love but a sort of butterfly affect. What one person decides to do in 1970 will change what happens in 2114 which will then affect humanity at some point in the distant future. That too isn't new. But then what is anymore, right?
Negatives
- Ok so the main complaint I had feels sort of nickpicky but needs to be said. The female servants in the futuristic dystopia are referred to as clones. And when one of the characters talks about a dream he has of that storyline he refers to them as a cafe where all the women had the same faces. The thing is, they obviously hired lots of Asian women and put them in as extras, gave them the same costumes and haircuts, and told them to look vacant. But they are DIFFERENT WOMEN. They aren't fucking clones. Would it have been over their budget to photoshop in the faces of the other women so that they all looked the same? Was the audience just supposed to go, "oh yes! They DOOO all look the same!" Because if the latter is the case I call foul. That is really offensive, the one thing I take offense too, more so than all the yellowface in all the movies ever. Because we do not all look the same and giving us all the same haircut and the same clothing doesn't mean we can play clones of each other. That is not ok.
- I still don't know why the post apocalyptic timeline happened. I think maybe it was in there somewhere? Or I was supposed to infer it? I don't know.
- Tom Hanks really cannot do accents.
- Like Inception or Malik's The Tree of Life, Cloud Atlas is going to be one of those movies people either love or hate. They're either going to "get it" or they're going to "not get it." I put those phrases in quotes because I hate the idea that "not getting it" means the person is wrong or stupid or narrow minded. Movies like this just connect or they don't. It's not necessarily a problem with the viewer if it doesn't. It's just that something of this scale and ambition will come off arrogant and pretentious to some, while for others it will be daring and brilliant. But it's definitely one of those movies you need to decide for yourself.
PS: Here's a great interview with the filmmakers BTW. To get more perspective on the issues I touched on.
Actually one part of the interview (part 5) really struck me. Berry and Hanks talked about it in their interview and it didn't click for me then. I didn't get it. But of course why would I? Right? Hanks asks Berry about the period dresses she's going to be wearing in her 1930s scenes. He goes, "Isn't this exciting? I love period movies." But instead of agreeing, she and Wachowski pause. That's when he understands. And I get it too. Berry would never have gotten to play a rich lady of comfort in the 1930s. As a black woman she would only ever play the servant or slave. Be it noble or heroic but only in that capacity anyway. But in playing a white Jewish woman she does inhabit this role and that's sad that historically, this is the only way she could do it, but the movie's point is that we are all each other and we influence each other and our identities aren't bound by race or gender but by our spirits.
In mentioning that though, I kind of wish Berry's white Jewish lady had had a bigger role.