We went to see that Cloud Atlas film last weekend, because we were both at a loose
end and we’d both read the book so it seemed like a good idea.
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| I got a dirty, dirty mouth. And a twenty-dollar wig. |
When the BBFC certificate came up at the beginning, it
warned that there was to be some ‘strong language (one very strong)’ so we
decided to keep a watch out for that and point it out when we spotted it (it
turned out to be Tom Hanks saying ‘cunt’ which doesn’t strike me as being
particularly strong in a film made for grown-ups, but I have been informed that
ladies tend to see it as the Swear Of Last Resort so I shall bow to their
sensibilities while also pondering why it is that gentlemen have no equal
antipathy to, I don’t know, ‘cock’ or ‘prick’ or ‘spamdagger’[1]).
The film does what films often do, which is to change the
narrative structure of its source material in order to make it more suitable
for the visual medium. In this case, the Russian Doll-like structure of the
book has had the back of an axe taken to it, smashing it into tiny shards of
narrative and strewing them all over. Which actually works, as this new
structure means the viewer has to pay attention to which story strand is being
focussed on at any given moment, rather than having the luxury of a fifteen to
twenty minute section to get bored with. Events are moved around – one event in
particular moves from the end of its original section in the book to the
beginning of the film’s, and in doing so changes the entire texture of the
sequences.
It is, in essence, a portmanteau film of the sort that were
made back in the sixties and seventies, the kind of film where rather posh
people on a train journey told each other rather interesting stories then found
out they were all rather dead. If it is, it’s a portmanteau film as made by
William Burroughs – cut up and slapped down again almost at random, but still
retaining some form of shape.
There are a number of other liberties taken with the story
tone; in the book, the Orison of Sonmi-451 sections read in a quiet, almost
stately manner, whereas in the film they’re treated as Great Big Loud Science
Fiction, with chases through the air and bright colours and you almost expect
Kate Beckinsale to pop up. Jim Broadbent’s main section, The Ghastly Ordeal of
Timothy Cavendish, by contrast, plays and looks very much like a 1970s Britcom
movie, out of keeping with the book’s more restrained, genteel comedy.
And of course there’s the make-up. This has been mentioned
in other places and it’s being mentioned here because it’s the weakest aspect
of the film. The concept of having the same main players taking different roles
is a good one; it underlines the theme of the book and puts it right up there
on screen for even the dumbest viewer to see.
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| Love actually is all around |
It’s further spotlit by the
lingering close-ups of the comet-shaped birthmark that recurs throughout the
different time periods shown, but the actors are the main vehicle for the idea.
Unfortunately, the make-up doesn’t always work. The aging makeup in particular
is awful – you wonder why Hugh Grant is hiding under a late period Jimmy Savile
mask – but in general you spend just a little too long noticing the make-up
rather than the actor, and a little too long noticing the actor under the
make-up in an “oh, it’s him again!’ way, that you’re jolted out of the film.
Sometimes, though, the disguise works – when Halle Berry turns up disguised as
a middle-class white woman, I actually thought it was Madonna up there on
screen, and that was as big a jolt as seeing Hugo Weaving in drag.
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| What? This isn't W.E.? |
Now you may have got the idea that I didn’t like this film.
And you’d be wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not in a so-bad-it’s-good way, as
I find bad films to be simply that: bad films, with no redemption to be had. Cloud
Atlas is not a bad film. It’s really a
pretty good film of a near-unfilmable novel. I’d read reviews that said it had
an unnecessary third hour, and I sat there wondering when that third hour would
appear, expecting the weight-shifting and bladder-straining that goes with an
overlong film. They didn’t come. The film held me, never less than interested
if not always entranced, for its full length, and I couldn’t say that about
most films I see.
I suspect that time will be good to Cloud Atlas, that it will get good word-of-mouth (I’ve yet to
meet anyone who’s seen it and didn’t enthuse about it, and that includes an
acquaintance in the film industry who can usually be relied on to badmouth
anything. And anybody. I like the fella.) and be watched repeatedly, either at
the cinema or on DVD. I’m going to see it again in two days, something I
haven’t done since I accidentally agreed to see Snakes On A Plane with two different people on consecutive days and
couldn’t in all conscience let either party down.
Go and see it. Read the book, either prior to or after the
film. Agree or disagree, love or hate, Cloud Atlas is at least an attempt by a big studio to make
something other than bangy shouty blowy-up films, laboured scatological comedy
films or pale wan teenage monster films, and for that at least it deserves your
time.
Coming Soon: The Marxist Dialectic in Wreck-It Ralph
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