stoolpigeon's Journal: Cloud Atlas - Spoilers

I watched Cloud Atlas last weekend. I have not read the book - though I probably will now. I really enjoyed the film. I've been thinking about it quite a bit since I watched it and here is what I've come up with so far.
 
I found each story to be compelling on its own. This is important because the ties between them weren't tight enough for the whole to make up for weakness in the parts. At least I didn't see it that way. I had a little trouble at times putting together the relationships between the stories. I still don't totally understand how some of it fit in, but since I enjoyed each part on its own - it didn't bother me.
 
The cast was pretty amazing. Jim Broadbent is pretty much awesome in everything I've seen him in. And he's been in a lot of movies I've liked. I get a real kick out of him here. The thing I love about the setup with the different stories is how the actors get to portray such really different roles in the same film. I've always been impressed how Tom Hanks really seems like different people in his different films, as opposed to say Bruce Willis, who I like but he's always the same character. In Cloud Atlas, the players really get an opportunity to show that ability off. And as much as I enjoy Hugo Weaving's characters, I'm thinking he probably falls into the 'always same guy' category. If it wasn't for Elrond I would just immediately see him and think, "There's that bad guy who exists in so many worlds."
 
I do have an issue with the Neo Seoul section of the film. I thought it was pretty cool - the effects and the way they showed the future. But I think the whole idea of how the fabricants were treated was a bit unrealistic. The fabricants are too much like people for the way they were treated to make a lot of sense. Can you imagine going to work every day to spend hours shooting cute Asian girls in the head and then stringing them up on meat hooks? That would mess people up in the head. I think the struggle that Decker feels in Blade Runner gets at the truth more of how it would be to try and treat 'artificial' humans as disposable. If the process had been more automated, it would have made more sense. I still liked the story though - I just thought it was a bit flat and without much complexity.
 
I still don't quite get what Weaving's green guy character was in the furthest forward story. I think he's the only one who goes from being an actual person to being a figment of someone's imagination. That didn't make a ton of sense to me. I also didn't get why if humanity is on the brink of extinction, a group with more technology and resources wouldn't want to recruit in others, rather than leave them to die. I get the whole prime directive idea but in this setting it made no sense.
 
All that said, I really enjoyed the film and how it showed the stories by moving through them. It was very interesting.

Hanks

[smittyoneeach]

He really gets at the need to appreciate the artist as distinct from the art.