Saw Cloud Atlas, an ambitious and pretentious film about a bunch of intertwining stories, stretching through the past and the future. The same characters play many parts and talk about an existentialist sort of afterlife, using film and literature to evoke a life after death, a legacy of goodwill and noble deeds forever rebelling against oppressive governments, brutal tribesmen, and overbearing nurses. Alas, because the same characters play many parts, this requires the use of some sometimes truly god-awful makeup to change the gender and race of the actors. It's very jarring, for example, to suddenly recognize Tom Hanks's face on some asian doctor's body. For some actors this works well, but Tom Hanks especially sticks out like a sore thumb. Frustrating.
The film keeps cutting between the different stories in a sort of collage, weaving one revelation with a setback in another story. This keeps things breathless and interesting but the film is 3 hours long and it wears after a while. This is intentionally used to drive the simultaneous climaxes of the different stories together into a hysterical crescendo, with the string section going crazy, men screaming in anguish and in slow motion, and women sweeping away in arch triumph all at once.
I really liked this movie. It's very much a mess and has deep flaws which contemporary reviews pointed out with hooting delight, but it's heart is in the right place and I'd rather see a fascinating mess than a smug masterpiece any day. It feels like a poor man's version of a lot of different films (Synecdoche New York and Tree of Life spring to mind.) It's very beautifully shot and told but also expects you to accept with total seriousness Halle Berry saying "you have to do whatever you can't not do". It feels most like Zardoz to me: definitely onto something interesting, extremely self-serious, and deeply silly at parts. Without an enduring box-office hook as good as Sean Connery in a red bikini, I think this one will eventually fall out of memory. Which is sort of a pity.
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