In the future, past, and present four or five actors wear horrible makeup as they go about a number of random and pointless tasks which have occasional overtones of significance. Mixed in with the mundane lives are several brutal and shockingly graphic moments tossed in for shock value.
The four or five stories are a bit of a challenge to follow and there is a hint or two that there should be some sort of connection that is never adequately explained. There isn’t even the basic sort of logic that the same actors are playing the same time hopping souls. For a moment I thought they were actual fictive characters that were somehow interacting with each other.
Each of the short stories follows it’s own logic and has it’s own ending, none of which has much connection to the other short stories. There are a couple of dramatic moments, a couple of funny moments, and lot of WTF? moments.
The makeup was truly awful, often to the point of distraction. It was especially silly when they changed gender or altered a person’s race. Which begs the question, why did they get five actors to play twenty-five parts? And then make them up to look like they did in other roles?
I’d never heard of Cloud Atlas and I have no idea if the book makes any more sense than the film.
Outside of the dreadful makeup the special effects were pretty good, but leaned a bit toward over the top. Everything was done on too grand a scale, like they asked George Lucas for advice on being subtle. But it did look good, which is a lot more than can be said for Speed Racer, the last Wachowski brothers movie I saw.
It seems that the story has a reincarnation aspect to it, but then there is one scene where a character dreams about the future. It’s traditional to remember Past lives, not Future lives. By the end of the film I had no idea at all what, if any, relationship these stories have to each other. The hint of a traveling birthmark didn’t help at all.
Cloud Atlas was interesting, but the distraction of the makeup ultimately overwhelmed whatever story was present.
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