The eagerly awaited film adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas has done the novel justice. Despite changing arguably its most innovative and defining feature – its structure of six stories interrupted at their climax and then reintroduced one by one – the film achieved an emotional resonance potentially out of reach for the novel’s linear form.
Mixing the character’s story-lines together, despite possibly being confusing at first for a viewer unfamiliar with the story, allowed for more powerful visual and aural links to be made and therefore created a greater emphasis on the story’s central theme: the interconnectedness of individual lives across time.
The differing genres and settings of the story-lines perfectly complimented each other to create a film that is never dull or slow but is instead at once beautiful, tragic, and incredibly funny. This feat is helped by the incredible performances of its main cast who each, often unrecognisably, appear in multiple roles across the different stories (my favourites being Tom Hanks as an angry Irish thug and Hugo Weaving as the imposing female matron of a nursing home).
As long as you can deal with a few moments of extreme gore (which despite their shocking nature do feel necessary) and the initial confusion potentially caused by the switching story-lines, the film gradually builds to an impressive climax that makes the 172 minutes worthwhile. Though this movie does not quite reach Cloud Nine, it is a thoroughly good attempt at what has long been considered an ‘unfilmable’ novel.
Verdict: 7/10