Review: Cloud Atlas

Being fair while making a movie review is easy. Remove all emotion, fandom and appreciate all the little details that make a film different from all others.

In theory it should work for all movies, but CLOUD ATLAS, the new film by the Wachowski brothers (the MATRIX saga) and Tom Tykwer (RUN LOLA, RUN), complicates this process in order for you to decide if it is a good film or not.

On one side you have an outstanding production:

The Cinematography is gorgeous, the art direction is impressive and the makeup department is going to need an extra award case for all the awards it can/should win.

The story, and the overall work done by the writer/directors, can be appreciated, but not overvalued.

From the very beginning the movie tells you what you are going to see- A complicated, slowly developing story that will deliver a satisfactory conclusion. I want to believe that the novel is ever more dense that the film itself, and in their desire for not disappointing the ones that read it, the creators made an enormous effort to preserve the original material in. Big mistake.

The result is like a sandwich made with nothing but leftovers- it takes care of your appetite, but does not leave you satisfied.

Multiple stories in different eras that you hope will connect somehow (just like its tag-line promises in the poster and trailers) but they never do.

Technically it is a very good movie that deserves the audience's attention, but narratively speaking it is a marathon of seemingly endless short-sequences too complex to digest with just one viewing.