One Sentence: Bold, confusing, awesome film making, that might be good or might be horrible.
Rated: R
Release Date: 26-Oct-2012
Nudity: Boobs
Everything is connected. That is the tagline for Cloud Atlas. Like there is a connection between The Wachowski’s and confusing multi-layered universes with complex questions about life, artificial life, butterfly effects and what we are all doing in the world. I do have to say that the idea of this movie is a wonderful thing. It takes balls or getting your balls cut off in the case of Lana Wachowski, to dare to make something this grand, long, and risky. This movie is really really risky.
I saw it on Tuesday and I have no idea if I like it. I remember seeing The Matrix Reloaded, where Neo goes and talks to The Architect about The Matrix. What it was and that it has been reloaded lots of times. Everyone was confused, they could not follow and for me it took 3 times watching it for me to feel like that scene was a good scene. That is what Cloud Atlas is like, except at 3 hours it is a bit more to deal with than a 10 minute scene.
It starts off confusing and ends confusing. It opens very quickly, leaving the details that explain things on the floor, to be picked up later, possibly by some comic or animated DVD. At 3 hours there is not enough time to explain “The Fall,” something that is referred to in the movie, the sub lines between the periods we are shown, and the language as it progresses through time, which leaves you not quite understanding what people are saying sometimes. As I am writing this out, it really shows the harsh reality of this movie. It is very hard to digest, and you have to go see it three times at least for it to be somewhere near full understanding.
So is that something you are willing to commit to? I am not sure if seeing it in the theater is the way to go. This might be a movie that is needed to be seen at home on DVD so you can watch it, talk about it, watch it again, talk about it and then watch it with the commentary on to maybe give you an idea of what is going on. Then you can make an opinion on if you like it or not. I still don’t know how I feel about it.
