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“Cloud Atlas” explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. (official distributor synopsis)
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It’s remarkable that the seams that connect the different stories in different time and space are so imperceptible that the film flows smoothly and the three hours are not even noticeable. Unfortunately, it results in something that has neither sufficient emotional nor cathartic effect. In other words, there is no profound experience, and by the end I felt a bit....empty. Anyway, I appreciate the courage to come up with something so non-commercial and non-subversive in this day and age, when A-film production resembles a controlled process to make money.
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Cloud Atlas completely bewitched me. I had to think about the film because that’s what I wanted from it, and that was exactly its goal. It was beautiful to look at, but it was even better that I wondered all the time if I could understand it or if I was just trying my best to follow those six stories. It’s hard when the creators tell you six stories, each different and each interesting and all the while certain characters incessantly keep talking so philosophically that the 172 minutes absolutely sucked me out at the end. I believe that the essence of the whole film lies somewhere in those thousand ideas, and it is clear to me that I should watch it at least twice more so that I can understand everything. However, it was not a problem for me to understand that the story is mainly about spirituality and the different views that Hindus have on the essence of life and death. Writing a review is very difficult for me, because there are a lot of things I could say about this movie but it’s hard to put them into a coherent sentence. But what I can say is mainly that I can’t give this film the full amount of stars, even though I wanted to. I really wanted to. For the unique originality and for the courage that the creators invested in this incredibly demanding story, when they decided to give up their royalties just to finish it. But it saddens me that I’ve been waiting for some brutal conclusion all this time, where the individual stories would merge beautifully into a single whole and it didn’t quite happen.
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It can be so much more if you let it. Happy and sad, bloody and tender. A long but beautiful film. And damn, I'm out of words. Anyway, if you want to believe in fated love, this might help. The best "short story" for me was the one from Seoul. Ah well. Even though he was deformed, Jim Sturgess was perfect.
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At first I was disgruntled by the constant jumping between storylines (sometimes after just a few seconds) and mixing of incompatible genre elements, where you’ll see Amistad costumes right next to Star Trek masks, but then my chagrin changed to wonder over this exceptional work. It has a complex narrative and is spiritually deep and innovative in the filmmaking aspect, with bold production. In a flood of thoughts about life and the timeless suffering of humanity, presented through fairy-tale poetics, dogs are shot, throats are cut and toes are sucked. And women play men and men play women. An epic ocean of breathtaking emotional moments that simply cannot be absorbed in all contexts at first viewing. A beautiful Halle Berry and demonic Hugo Weaving. A great risk on the part of the investors. Second and third viewings are necessary, so my rating is only preliminary.
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This was a loss. A bold and extremely imaginative, variable and deep book transplanted into a dynamic and agile network that does not raise questions, but answers didactically. In addition, the film helps itself with the hackneyed new age symmetries that we know intimately from The Fountain, but also from Mr. Nobody - if you do not know how to connect remote storylines, fateful love is the answer. In addition, the film adds to it the typical pathetism of all-encompassing mysticizing concepts such as Eternity, Infinity, Reincarnation, Destiny, and if the viewer does not happen to get it, one of the characters will literally repeat it 4 times. The result is a completely uninteresting and mechanical work for me, which fails even in moments that I considered "laid" - the 5th story of Sonmi in the book is a poignant picture of capitalist-fascist-totalitarian dystopia, in which rebellion is only a prefabricated part of the consumerist chain. That's terribly little. Compared to The Matrix trilogy, the virtuoso Speed Racer or Tykwer's "gender-deconstruction" Three, this is more of a Junk Atlas.
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