Sadly, my attempts to make this blog cutting edge failed rather miserably when I went away for last weekend out of internet range and then came back to find that I had great difficulty finding time to sit down and write. What I missed being able to blog during that time was that, first of all, Warner Brothers has now released a shorter 2:30 trailer for Cloud Atlas. It’s mostly the same things that we’ve already seen, but with a couple of other clips – most tantalising of all (at least to me as a classical music buff) is the small snippet of the Cloud Atlas Sextet that can be heard playing on a record at the beginning of the trailer.
“Cloud Atlas” is like the entire “Matrix” trilogy in micro. It starts out absolutely brilliantly, then segues into a pretentious slog. Jordan Hoffman at film.com. Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski wanted to make a movie unlike any other, and they certainly did: Cloud Atlas is a unique and totally unparalleled disaster. Calum Marsh at slantmagazine.com
Henry Barnes at The Guardianis a bit more mild, suggesting that it’s all very silly, but there’s probably something everyone will like.
At 163 minutes Cloud Atlas carries all the marks of a giant folly, and those unfamiliar with the book will be baffled. Yet it’s hard to wholly condemn the directors’ ambition – this is fast-paced and cleverly assembled, with the best of the performances shining through the prosthetics (Hugh Grant makes great play of the clutch of villains he’s dealt). The Tykwer/Wachowski collective offer everything here. Chances are there’s something in the hodgepodge for you.
Another middle-of-the-road review from Tim Robey at The Telegraph.
Cloud Atlas is going to be far and away the most divisive film of 2012, but I don’t think it’s possible to fault it for shortage of chutzpah. David Mitchell’s 2005 novel – pipped to the Booker prize by Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, though in any other year it would surely have won – is a virtuoso plate-spinning exercise, an addictive feat of nested storytelling, and a sprawling treatise about human capacities for removing and reclaiming freedom. It’s amazing they’ve tried to adapt it at all, let alone as a single, near-three hour picture. In the hands of co-writers and directors the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer there was a danger of it mutating into a monstrous ballooning folly. So even more amazing is that it strays frequently in that direction but never quite bursts.
But then there were reviewers who could understand why others might not like the film, but nonetheless, thought the film was amazing.
It’s a massive cinematic accomplishment on the grandest scale, an utterly enchanting, moving, remarkable storytelling masterpiece. Let it affect you. Discover the revelations yourself. (Firstshowing.net)
And my personal favourite review so far, with the great title “CLOUD ATLAS Is Overwhelming, Odd And Utterly, Completely Amazing”:
Cloud Atlas is sometimes silly, and it’s sometimes pretentious and it’s sometimes overstuffed. But every single one of those things, to me, is a positive. It’s an exceptional piece of filmmaking, one of the bravest works I have ever seen. (badassdigest.com)
So really, the only question is – why do we have to wait so long to see it in cinemas down here in Australia?