Cloud Atlas review

Cloud Atlas (15, 172 mins)
Directors: Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

by Steven Neish

While reading the diaries of a young American lawyer (Jim Sturgess) busy concluding business during the Californian gold-rush, amanuensis Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) produces “The Cloud Atlas Sextet”, a masterpiece in part inspired by the dreams of an aging composer. After a chance meeting with Frobisher’s ex-lover in 1973 puts her up against Lloyd Hooks (Hugh Grant), journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) pens a crime novel based on her investigations into his oil company, to be published 27 years later by one Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent). In the future, the plight of a small rebellion and their clone saviour (Doona Bae) continues to impact the life of Zachry (Tom Hanks), 106 years after The Fall.

Written, produced and directed by the Wachowski siblings and Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas is one of the most expensive independent movies of all time. The film’s ambitious nature goes far beyond finding financers, however, as it attempts to translate David Mitchell’s labyrinthine, meandering and damn-near impossible novel for the big screen.

While Ang Lee has already filmed the unfilmable with Yann Martel’s Oscar-winning Life Of Pi, that story only dared to tackle such everyday concepts as life, love and faith. Cloud Atlas, on the other hand, does not stop there; split into six separate but intertwining stories, the film uses twelve actors, unprecedented prosthesis and countless characters to ruminate on everything from prejudice, bigotry and subjegation to art, fate and the very fabric of time and space.

Unlike most multi-strand stories of its ilk, there isn’t a single dud note to be found in Cloud Atlas‘ pages, leitmotif or frames. Every thread, though diverse, holds its own as each weaves in and out of the other competing and complementing narratives. Whether it’s the poignancy of one composer’s search for inspiration, the comedy of one old codger’s attempted escape from an old folks’ home, or one saviour’s plight in a dystopian future, the filmmakers build an entire universe, generation by generation, that is forever bold, believable and utterly breathtaking.

That they manage to introduce each of the six strands without immediately losing half of the audience is an incredible achievement; that they continue to develop and explore the individual stories across the remaining running time is something else entirely. Not only do the filmmakers manage to cut from story to story in a way that is fluid and meaningful, but they manage to build to simultaneous moments of overwhelming power and emotion in the process, the structure simulating the cyclical nature of its source material without ever becoming repetitive.

Even more astonishing is the work done in front of the camera. During development the decision was made to recycle the core cast across the various stories to add to the overarching sense of inter-connectivity between past, present and future. It works beautifully, as the likes of Hanks, Berry and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, Grant are able to showcase their talents, and within a single film put paid to their individual pigeonholes and typecasts. The actors, unlimited by age, race or gender, each deliver a plethora of perfectly-judged performances. Even if the make-up occasionally falters, their abilities never do.

That said, it would be easy to laugh at Cloud Atlas, and I’m sure many will. Heck, there are days - years, even - in which I’m certain I would do, too. While some of the storylines are funnier than others (intentionally, that is), there is an unabashed grandiosity and pretense that lingers throughout. When grappling with such enormous themes and while boldly pushing the boundaries of technology and belief, however, you will always run the risk of alienating audiences, and the accomplishments of Cloud Atlas are so vast that it really doesn’t matter how you react to it, just that you do react. And that you keep reacting for many years to come as the film is studied, debated and slowly unravelled.

Having now seen the film twice, I’m more convinced than ever that Cloud Atlas is something truly special. It’s a masterpiece for the ages; a master-work and borderline transcendent experience that leaves everything else released so far this year in its wake, somehow managing to tell just about every story imaginable in the space of three hours. How it wasn’t nominated for Best Film, let alone Best Adapted Screenplay or Best Make-Up is still beyond me, but then even after two viewings so too is much of the film.

Larry Crowne review

Larry Crowne (12A/PG-13, 98 mins)
Director: Tom Hanks
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Tom Hanks marks his second time out as director with this throwaway comedy drama, co-writing with Nia Vardalos of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame. Hanks also stars as Larry Crowne, a department store worker and model employee who is let go because he doesn’t have a college education. Recently divorced, unable to find another job, and with negative equity on his house, he decides his only recourse is to go back to college where one of his tutors turns out to be Julia Roberts. Leaving aside the similarities to the episode of Family Guy where Peter is passed over from promotion because he hadn’t finished the third grade, this is a breezy and charming, if paper thin confection that features very little interaction between its two stars during the early stages and too many incidental characters. It’s lightly comical without aiming for especially funny, but some shoddy physical gags let it down, and with its modest budget and ambitions, it’s far from the superstar vehicle suggested, though both Hanks and Roberts remain highly watchable.

Toy Story 3 review

Toy Story 3 (U, 108 mins)
Director: Lee Unkrich

★★★★★

If ever there were a lingering doubt that Pixar Animation is the most consistently excellent studio in Hollywood today, that shred is obliterated by the release of Toy Story 3. Fifteen years on from the original Toy Story, their commitment to the storytelling crafts is unyielding.

Toy Story may have been the first film ever to be created entirely on a computer, but it wouldn’t have made half the impact it did without a rock solid screenplay to support it. Toy Story 2 came along four years later and taught us that there’s nothing more important on heaven or earth than spending time with the people that we love. It remains, to this day, one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema.

Since then the alchemists at Pixar, surely through some sort of Faustian pact, have elevated the animated art to such masterful levels that the only danger going in to Toy Story 3 is how it could possibly live up to the first two instalments.

Astonishingly, not only is it a match, it might even be the best of the three. No trilogy in history has managed to start with a masterpiece and then get progressively better; not Star Wars, not The Godfather, not Lord of the Rings.

It opens with an action scene that serves as the perfect reintroduction to characters we may not have encountered in a decade, as Woody the cowboy (voiced by Tom Hanks) and space ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), along with all the other toys belonging to young Andy, get involved in a wild west/sci-fi adventure in Andy’s imagination.

But this turn out to have been a memory from several years before, and Andy has put away childish things and is about to go off to college. He’ll only be taking Woody with him, which means it’s either the attic or the bin for the rest of the toys.

They actually end up at a nursery that at first glance seems like a place where they’ll never be outgrown. Most of the toys want to stay and get played with but, for Woody, Andy is all that matters. What follows is a series of escapes, rescues, action and comedy that’s quite simply perfect in every detail.

What becomes apparent, and it’s something we may not have consciously realised before, is that these toys - these computer programs - have become some of the most beloved characters in movie history. We’re saying goodbye to friends we’ve made and over the course of 15 years and this allows Toy Story 3 to hit emotional highs even Pixar hasn’t achieved before, because we’ve not had this level of relationship with their characters before.

What we don’t get is much time between Woody and Buzz, but by now their friendship is well enough established, and Woody deserves to take his place with the greatest movie heroes, in noblest sense of the word, alongside George Bailey and Atticus Finch.

It’s possibly not the most original of the three, but it’s certainly the funniest, the darkest and the most emotionally challenging but at the same time satisfying. It goes to places and explores ideas about the very nature of existence and fully realised stories containing such thematic richness are incredibly rare.

Pixar’s achievement is most remarkably demonstrated during action sequences so rooted in, and revealing of, character that all other action films this year are rendered irrelevant. And it creates, in its most perilous moments, a meditation on death as profound as anything by Bergman, and a sense of mortality that will have us all looking into the abyss.

That’s it’s the best film of the year by a great distance is so obvious it barely merits mentioning, but there’s something bigger at work here. More than mere movies, Pixar has now created things to live our lives by. Toy Story 3 speaks to us all about the fundamentals of life and death, love and friendship, and it’s as essential as oxygen.