Cloud Atlas

http://cloudatlas.warnerbros.com/downloads.php

Last weekend we finally made it to the theater and saw Cloud Atlas, about which I’d seen mixed reviews.* I loved it! The story, as you undoubtedly know by now, is a convoluted intertwining of six different stories, set far apart in time and space, but connected by some cosmic synchronicity that’s never made entirely explicit. The main actors play a stunning variety of roles, with virtuoso skill, and sometimes I was only guessing who I was looking at. I was quite satisfied by the ending, despite the many dangling threads. It helps to have not just a tolerance for, but even an appetite for ambiguity and open questions.

Random thoughts:

• What writer wouldn’t love the scene where Tom Hanks, as an affronted author, throws a prominent critic off a balcony?
• Hugo Weaving makes a great villain, but I do wish he’d been cast as at least one good guy. Or maybe he was, and I just didn’t recognize him.
• Halle Berry is stunningly beautiful. (You probably already knew that.)

Though it’s a bladder-busting near-3-hour movie, the time flew by for me. I was never bored, except maybe briefly during chase scenes. (They were perfectly good chase scenes, but you can only watch so many chase scenes in a lifetime and still find them interesting.) I fully intend to see it again in the theater, and will be waiting for a chance to buy the DVD. I might even spring for Blu-ray.

*The two reviews that come closest to matching my own reaction to the movie are this one, from the New York Times, and this, from Roger Ebert.