What is Any Ocean but a Multitude of Drops? CLOUD ATLAS

Starting with nothing less than a Homeric incantation in which a white-haired old man stares into a crackling fire and seems to summon the fiction into being, Cloud Atlas, an ambitious adaptation of David Mitchell’s tricky novel, is the kind of movie that’s easy to recommend and admire, if for no other reason than that nothing quite like it has ever existed and is unlikely to come around again any time soon. It wobbles at times, but luckily it’s ultimately better than the sum of its gimmicks. This is a complicated film about simple truths: love, ambition, knowledge, power. A major motif is a musical composition that one of the characters writes called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet.” It’s a lush, haunting piece of music that winds its way through the soundtrack and, by its very nature, echoes the major structural conceit of the film. A sextet is a piece of music to be played by six musicians. This film – like the novel before it – contains six stories, any one of which could easily expand into its own film, but together combine into one gorgeous whole.

Spanning centuries and genres, the film breaks apart the book’s chronological and mirrored presentation and instead places the six stories parallel to each other, cutting between the stories with a gleeful, witty, dexterous montage that recalls D.W. Griffith’s 1916 feature Intolerance in the way it so skillfully weaves in and out of varying plotlines. A massive undertaking, three directors, Tom Tykwer (of Run Lola Run and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) and Lana and Andy Wachowski (of The Matrix films and Speed Racer) split the six sections among them, adapting and directing separately but from a shared common vision so that the story flows both stylistically and emotionally. Like some strange geometric object with many sides and layers, the film grows all the more epic by expanding outwards through time and space.

It takes us to the Pacific Ocean in the nineteenth century aboard a ship sailing towards America. Then, we’re in Europe in the 1930s, following a disinherited, but ambitious and talented, music student to the home of an elderly composer. Next, we’re in 1970s America, following an intrepid reporter into a conspiracy at a new nuclear power plant. On to the present, where we find a publisher who is the victim of a mean brotherly prank and stuck in an unexpected place. Then we’re to the future, where a clone slave describes her story of finding awareness of the consumerist dystopia she lives in. Finally, to the far future, where we find a post-apocalyptic world that has returned to clannish living in the wilderness, where the peaceful people are terrorized by a tribe of aggressive cannibals. Tykwer and the Wachowskis present each setting with handsomely realized production design and detailed special effects. Moving between them is anything but disorienting; it’s, more often than not, invigorating.

Almost too much to handle in one sitting, this film is a rush of character and incident, themes and patterns, echoes upon echoes, all distinctive melodies that fade and reoccur time and again. Some sequences play more successfully than others, but the film is largely fascinating and generally gripping as it becomes a symphony of imagery and genre, returning again and again to mistakes humankind makes, the benefits and constraints of orderly society, and the way underdogs try to find the right thing to do against all odds. The themes play out repeatedly in a flurry of glancingly interconnected genre variations. What appears as drama later plays as comedy, as action, as mystery, as tragedy. Tykwer and the Wachowskis have put the film together in such a way that the editing escalates with the intensity of each plotline, bouncing in an echoing flurry during rhyming plot points (escapes, reversals of fortune, setbacks, reunions) and settling down for more languid idylls when the plots simply simmer along. By turns thrilling, romantic, disturbing, suspenseful, and sexy, there’s a fluidity here that makes this a breathless three-hour experience. The film moves smoothly and sharply between six richly imagined stories that connect more spiritually and metaphysically than they do literally, and yet artifacts of one story may appear in another, sets may be redressed for maximum déjà vu, characters in one story may dream glimpses of another. This isn’t a puzzle to be solved, but rather a stylish assertion that people are inescapably connected to their circumstances and to those who lived before and will live after.

In order to underline its insistence upon the connectedness of mankind then, now, and always, the film features the same cast in each story, making it possible to get a sense of the progression of a soul through time, each reincarnation living up (or down) to the example of earlier experiences and choices. Through mostly convincing makeup, actors cross all manner of conventions, playing not just against type, but crossing race, gender, age, and sexual orientation in unexpected ways. (Some of the biggest pleasant surprises in the film are in the end credits, so I’ll attempt to preserve them.) For example, Tom Hanks appears as a crackpot doctor, then again as a thuggish wannabe writer, then again as a haunted future tribesman, among other roles. This is a large, talented and eclectic cast with Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Keith David, Doona Bae, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, David Gyasi, Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant delivering strong performances, appearing over and over, sometimes obviously, sometimes unrecognizably or for only a moment. This allows the filmmakers to dovetail the storylines even further, for what is denied in one (lovers torn apart, say) may be given back in the space of an edit (lovers, not the same people, but played by the same performers, reunited).

Though some will undoubtedly be turned away by its earnest (if vague) spirituality and messy philosophical bombast, this is the kind of film that, if you let it, opens up an endless spiral of deep thoughts. You could think it over and spin theories about what it all means for hours. To me, that’s part of the fun. It’s a historical drama, a romance, a mystery, a sci-fi epic, a comedy, and a post-apocalyptic fantasy all at once. In placing them all in the same film and running them concurrently Tykwer and the Wachowskis have created a moving and exciting epic that seems to circle human nature as each iteration finds characters struggling against societal conventions to do the right thing. The powerful scheme and rationalize ways to stay on top; those below them yearn for greater freedom and greater meaning. There’s much talk about connection and kindred spirits; at one point a character idly wonders why “we keep making the same mistakes…” It accumulates more than it coheres, and yet that’s the bold, beautiful mystery of Cloud Atlas, that it invites a viewer into a swirl of imagery, genre, and character, to be dazzled by virtuosic acting and effective filmmaking, to get lost amongst the connections and coincidences, to enjoy and perhaps be moved by the shapes and patterns formed by souls drifting through time and space.

Twenty Days in the Life: ONE DAY

You pick your friends, or so the saying goes, but that’s not entirely true, is it? Circumstance, coincidence and closeness play a role in friendship as well so that it’s quite possible you can look back upon a time in your life and discover that you were drawn into a friendship that you didn’t value until that person was already gone. Such is the story of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess), two acquaintances who become sort-of-friends only to circle around each other, flitting in and out of the other’s life, for the better part of twenty years, flirting, toying, yearning all the while to become more than friends.

We first encounter the two of them thrown together on the night of their graduation from Edinburgh University in 1988. They’re in a group of drunken revelers who stumble through town, but slowly, two by two, the graduates peel off from the main group. Emma and Dexter end up spending time together and then parting ways. Through the rest of One Day, we will check in on these two characters every July 15th for two decades. Sometimes they are together. Other times, the day passes without them even thinking of one another. This is ostensibly a romance, presented with a shameless gimmick, but it’s presented in such a low-key, casually unimportant way that the artifice of it all is hidden beneath the dullness.

By giving us only one day per year, the little snippets of passing time accumulate slowly into a big picture, but there’s also a lot of exposition that must be shoved into what little time we have to spend with these people each year. Emma struggles in her twenties, but then finds some professional success. Dexter finds near-immediate professional success, but he’s just as lost as Emma in his twenties, the sense of floundering aimlessly only growing as he finds early success slipping away. There are two full human lives on display for us to watch but we get only glimpses, leaving the impression that the better story is often unfolding on the days we are not privy to.

I found myself wondering if the film would be better, more powerful and emotional, if we got to see more of these characters. Hathaway and Sturgess do fine, intimately textured work, but there’s a sense of the whole production struggling under the weight (or rather, lack thereof) of so much thinness. I got a sense that the actors know more about who these characters are then the film allows them to express. Even supporting characters like Dexter’s mother, played by the reliable Patricia Clarkson, seem to fade away, taking potential for deepening the film’s texture with them. Adapted by David Nicholls from his own bestselling novel, unread by me, this is a prime example of a concept that I’d imagine could work better with the nuance and detail capable in text. Filmed, there’s far too much telling instead of showing.

As it plods forward, the plot of One Day seems to stretch thinner and thinner. Director Lone Scherfig, of the well-acted and Oscar-nominated An Education from a couple of years ago, coaches some decent acting but has a rather perfunctory visual style here and a flatness of pace that works to dull the emotions. The years stamp onto the screen with each passing day, allowing me all too much time to contemplate just how much longer I’d be sitting in the theater, struggling to get on the film’s wavelength. Late in the film, when one character suddenly dies, I found myself profoundly unmoved. But then, in the final stretch, the plot folds over upon itself and gains some shallow depth that is faintly effective and affecting. By then, though, it was too little too late.

Birds of a Feather Fight Together: THE LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE

There is nothing surprising about an epic fantasy that follows a young potential hero who goes on a long journey to find help in overthrowing the forces of evil. It’s basic Joseph Campbell. What makes Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole stand out is that all of the characters are owls. Furthermore, these are family-friendly computer-generated owls directed by Zack Snyder, the man behind the zippy Dawn of the Dead remake, the tedious Greek battle 300, and the slavishly reverential graphic novel adaptation Watchmen. Replacing his trademark blood sprays with plumes of dislodged feathers, Snyder makes sure to include plenty of bombast and slow-motion so that we can enjoy every little piece of these birds.

At first, the ponderous owls, with their intense proclamations and complex mythology, charmed me. But then, sitting through scene after repetitive, formless scene, I quickly grew tired of the visual monotony and painfully thin narrative. This is a film that takes its anthropomorphic creatures very seriously. The characters move about more or less how I picture real owls would. They flap, they glide, and they swoop down to snatch up prey with their gleaming talons. Unlike real owls, these have learned how to become blacksmiths. They don metal helmets and sharp talon-extensions that glint in the moonlight as they dive down towards each other in grotesque imitations of human combat.

Why do these owls fight? I don’t really know. The harder I worked to figure out the varied political currents that run through the various owl species and kingdoms, the less I cared. It’s very clear, though, that the pure-white owl with Helen Mirren’s voice is evil of the worst kind. Her minions capture young owls from all over the land, including our hero, the one with Jim Sturgess’s voice. These captive owls are either brainwashed into brainless harvesters searching for flecks of metal or sent into intense training to become a soldier. Our hero escapes and sets off on a quest to find the Owls of Ga’Hoole, semi-mystical, possibly mythical, guardians of all that is good amongst fowl.

This is a movie that’s constantly on the move. Each scene careens into the next scene. The owls fly here and there and endlessly explain themselves. Then they find themselves in some kind of danger and – whew! – escape to fly somewhere else. I must admit that I often found the owls hard to differentiate. Looking at the credits, I would have a very hard time indeed informing you as to the difference between Gylfie (Emily Barclay), Otulissa (Abbie Cornish), and Eglantine (Adrienne DeFaria). (Though I’m pretty sure Digger (David Wenham) is the one that’s supposed to be funny because he flings dirt). It got so confusing I couldn’t even tell whether it was Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill or Hugo Weaving with his voice coming out of a flapping beak.

That was hardly the end of my confusion. I never quite had a handle on why the evil owls needed all that metal, even, or especially, when they put it to use by making it shoot blue bolts of something. I also couldn’t understand the hierarchy of the owl world that seems to consist of different species (clans? families?) that had little or no knowledge of each other, except when it was necessary to advance the plot. With such wide-ranging evil being perpetrated by the villains, surely we wouldn’t need a scene where the hero needs to convince some other owls that this is happening?

Then again, I couldn’t follow the geography of this crazy place either. For all I know, these owls fly all the way around the world during the course of the story. This movie only really succeeded in giving me a headache. Note to future owl-epic authors: learn from the mistakes of Snyder and his screenwriters John Orloff and Emil Stern. When making a film about a world populated almost entirely by owls, at least let the audience understand the world to some degree. (Though it’s not without its problems, see 1982’s The Secret of NIMH for an example of mildly dark fantasy in the animal world done more or less coherently). The Owls of Ga’Hoole quickly lost me with its seemingly disconnected settings, thinly sketched characters, and its painfully obvious formula. Yes, it was sometimes pleasing to the eye, but it sure wasn’t worth sitting through the film for those rare moments.