You get a clue that Cloud Atlas is a hugely ambitious film when you see that it is 160 minutes long. The length itself isn't a problem; the problem is that there is too much going on to take in. So you'd need to watch this a few times to figure out what is going on ... at which point the length then becomes a problem ... who wants to watch a 160 minute film 3 times to figure out what's going on?
There are basically 6 interwoven stories here. Interwoven in the edit and (I think) in cause-and-effect. I say I think so, because I'm assuming that the same actor represents the same soul in each thread. That might sound obvious, but in some cases the actor is so heavily made up that it is hard to tell. Very impressive on the make-up front, but another flaw for me: it is hard enough to track the connections across 6 threads without having to speculate whether A equals B as well.
What happened when I watched this may or may not be typical. I found myself focussing hard on 3 of the stories and the other 3 became an irritation. The young lawyer, the composer and the clone all managed to grab my attention. Possibly because Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw and Doona Bae all give excellent performances.
In a novel this level of complexity works because you can set your own pace and go back to previous chapters to check details if you want. In a film it doesn't work. The connections are missed, or lost, and you are left feeling like you are trying to watch several films at the same time.
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