The Cloud Atlas

[peter]

Make me feel good why don't you? [ ]

[peter]

Saw this again just to see if I could make more sense of it and suprisingly found I could. I'm not sure i got all of the connections, but it did seem to hang together better than I'd previously thought. Having the same actors playing roles throughout the six interwoven stories confuses me a bit; are we supposed to draw paralells between their characters at different points of history - they seemed to exhibit no common thread that I could discern. Aside from that I actually quite enjoyed the film and am more motivated now to give the book a go, which I understand is more structured than the film. Each story I believe, sits inside the next going from future to past with the historically earliest being an unbroken tale in the middle of the book. Then, like a Russian doll, each story is completed in chronological order until finally the book ends in the future, with the completion of the story with which the book began. It could well prove easier to make the connections I missed in the film in this form of presentation.

[peter]

I've recently finished the book on which the film is based and can say without question that it worked much better for me. The abandoning of the story within a story within a story structure by the film was I think a grave mistake. Initially this was followed in the film - then disposed of latterly. For me the message of the work as a whole did not come through in the film - though I do feel that I need to revisit it post reading of the book to perhaps re-evaluate its performance. I've posted a longer discussion on the themes of the work in the book thread of the same name - so if you are interested you could pay it a visit and continue the discussion there.

[lucimay]

wow.

we saw two different films.
I just got finished enthusing about this film on another thread!!

well i'm sorry that we didn't agree on this one peter but, to each his own I reckon.

I never had a seconds trouble following the flow but...
I am one of the few people I know that read the first installment of The Malazan Book of the Fallen (Gardens of the Moon) and wasn't put off by
how difficult it was to follow.

anyways I don't wanna repeat myself all over the place so you can look at that other cloud atlas thread to see what I had to say about it.

[Rigel]

Oh hey, thanks for the reminder! I should bust out the score for this one again (I don't know when I'll sit down to watch a 3-hour movie these days lol)

[peter]

Horses for courses Lucimay! But in fairness I've been thinking that I should revisit the film with the book under my belt and your post certainly encourages me to do so. Sometimes a small thing can 'wash your eyes' and make you see something in a totally different light. I'll let you know how I get on (when the film appears on Sky or Netflix again).

[lucimay]

Horses for courses Lucimay! But in fairness I've been thinking that I should revisit the film with the book under my belt and your post certainly encourages me to do so. Sometimes a small thing can 'wash your eyes' and make you see something in a totally different light. I'll let you know how I get on (when the film appears on Sky or Netflix again).

oh good! glad you're willing to give it another shot!

again, I thought this film should've won every award in the book! lol!!
directing( 3 directors!!), acting (tom hanks, halle berry, and especially doona bae and ben whishaw,) costumes, set design, editing, cinematography, and makeup most especially because of the cast doing multiple roles!! (if you can't guess who everyone is, go to IMDB and check the cast list, it shows how many roles each actor played)
and then there's the music, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, written by director Tom Tykwer and his long time collaborators Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil which is just GORGEOUS.

as you can see, I can go on and on about this film. heh.