Cloud Atlas (2012)

[Dave Monroe]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Tom Beshear <tbeshear at att.net> wrote:

> Movie critics are rarely literary critics. Movies rely mostly on a single
> linear narrative. How many movie critics are equipped to deal with a movie
> that's playing a literary game? Let alone whether the movie plays that game
> well. Guess I'm saying that I would expect most reviews of this film to be
> not just negative, but aggressively so.

... for once, I agree with Rex Reed. Meanwhile, "nonlinearity" is
hardly uncommon even in mainstream cinema, and the adaptatation is
rather less "linear" than the novel, even.  It was actually an obvious
idea (to anyone but certain easily impressed reviewers, apparently) to
cut 'n' paste the novel chronologically/thematically, but when you
ultimately devote essentially the length of a sitcom to each of the
half-dozen narratives, there's not a whole lotta time to figure out
even what's going on, much less to care about any of it.  Ultimately,
it relies on either at least a passing familiarity with the book
(perhaps seeded via pre-realease publicity),  and/or Pavlovian
emotional response via cliched musical cues + portentious (spelled
with a "pre") dialogue .   Looked pretty damn cheap (effects, makeup,
sets, costumes--acting, for that matter) as well, esp. for "one of the
most expensive independent films of all time" (Wikipedia). "SyFy,"
indeed:

http://www.examiner.com/review/cloud-atlas-review-lost-transition

"A lot of the time, Cloud Atlas feels like D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance
by way of Zardoz"

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/screen/cloud_atlas_revolutionary_spirit_helps_it_soar-175462211.html

... and that's from a favorable review.  But not so much Intolerance
via Zardoz as Magnolia via The Fountain. I've seen Robert Altman
films, @ least, + neither Tykwer nor Los Bros Wachowski, sir, are
Robert Altman, + even less so than either Anderson or Aronowsky, so
...