“Oh, he always plays the bad guy.  Just watch.”  I heard that all the time when I was growing up.  My mom was quite the connoisseur of movie pigeonholes.  She’d have been gobsmacked by Cloud Atlas, a film that takes actors and has them portray characters good, evil and all shades in-between.  This is a film that is described as a “sweeping epic”, and rightly so.  But it also manages to take time to let the viewers really get to know the characters and care what happens next.  I did something I haven’t done in awhile when I watched Cloud Atlas: I never once took my eyes off the screen.  That played hell with my scrounging in my purse for that last bit of chocolate I’d dropped, but for this film sacrifices had to be made.

How to describe Cloud Atlas without taking pages of narrative to do so?  Aye, that’s the rub.  Well, it tells several stories from the viewpoints of even more characters.  These stories happen at various points in the history of our world.  As the movie progresses, these stories become tangled up in one another, and you see that one simple act can really change fate.  I usually don’t share my screening notes in reviews, as most people don’t dig gibberish, but interspersed among the bits of story I jotted down were the words fascinating, powerful and epic.  And I don’t jot that kinda stuff down very often.  This is the first time I’ve ever used ‘em all to describe one film.

This movie impressed the hell out of me.  Is it the next Citizen Kane?  Maybe not, but then again I’m not somebody who thinks Kane is the greatest movie ever made.  (I can talk for hours about how it’s movie perfection…still, it’s never truly drawn me in.)  So let’s just say that Cloud Atlas is Cloud Atlas; a well-made film that is able to juggle many different stories, eras and characters and do it extraordinarily well.

Just to let you know how hard the moviemakers worked on this, the stories in Cloud Atlas take place in:

* 1850
* 1931
* 1977
* 2012
* Neo-Seoul (a hyper-tech Blade Runner/Serenity-esque future)
* After The Fall (a post-apocalyptic distant future)

Telling you more about these stories would be a disservice to you, as letting ‘em unspool so you can experience them yourself is the way to go.  Some characters are in more than one story — part of the whole intertwined thing — while other characters return as a reincarnation of a former self.  The “souls” (characters are kind of a weak term for the players here) re-appear in other eras based upon how they’d behaved in an earlier incarnation.  Souls come closer and closer, or further and further from compassion.  So, for example, you get Hugh Grant as Slave Trader/Mob Guy/Corporate Asshat/Douchebag Brother/Futuristic Cannibal Tribesman (with an awesomely terrifying yet strangely hilarious makeup & costume).  And he’s not even one of the “leads”.  The folks whose characters shoulder the main stories are Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter), Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) and Doona Bae (The Host).  Special consideration must go to Hugo Weaving; his Nurse Ratched Noakes is breathtaking to behold, and is also awesome in an Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Part 2 kinda way.

There’s terrific interplay between stories; the weaving of eras and tales could have been choppy, or worse yet incomprehensible, but Cloud Atlas pulls it off and Film Editor Alexander Berner makes it look easy.  Of course when you’re working with film shot by directors Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and the bro/sis combo of Andy and Lana Wachowski (V for Vendetta, The Matrix) there’s probably tons of great stuff to work with. Everything is gorgous and well done here, from the acting to the makeup, costuming t0 set design, music to cinematography.  Not an easy trick with all these different eras and locales.  I want to see this film again just so I can figure out if I really loved it, or part of my love is clouded by earthshattering awe at it’s accomplishment. I’m sure there’s a little of both.

The themes in Cloud Atlas don’t just come at you, you’re whumped on the head with ‘em.  And with all that’s going on in this film, that’s a good thing.  “You do what you can’t not do”….“What is an ocean, but a multitude of drops….”  Listen to the words of the oppressed, there is wisdom there.  Do kindness when you can.  By each crime and every act of charity we build the path towards our future.  The different and sometimes intriguing patois in some of these stories are sometimes difficult to understand, but the payoff is worth it.  And it works to cement the characters in the era in question, since each actor plays many different roles throughout the film.  (Never more than one per story arc, however; that keeps things from being too difficult to bear.)

Funny, heartbreaking, uplifting, horrifying and touching, Cloud Atlas is the kind of film that makes me want to turn right around while I’m still in the theater and see it again.  That’s a pretty damn good thing for any film, but especially so for a film that nearly clocks in at 3 hours.  You’ve gotta see this one; this is the film folks will be talking about all the way through Oscar season.  And beyond.