Film review: Cloud Atlas

This is a beautiful movie, but it would be even more epic if I had any idea what was going on the entire time. I did grasp certain aspects of it, but (even with the subtitles on for the whole thing) it’s going to take another viewing to really get it. It involves many different stories taking place from 1940s England to Neo Seoul in 2144, and yet it’s the same story throughout, of love and bravery. While watching, you can also simultaneously play “guess which characters are Tom Hanks.” He plays like seventeen characters, but I lost count after a while. At one point in the movie, Halle Berry legitimately plays an old Asian man, which I didn’t find out about until the ending credits because (for some strange reason) I didn’t recognize her in that role. Ben Whishaw was very adorable in this movie, and the scene where the old people were trying to escape the rest home was just hilarious.

After watching the whole movie and staring at the screen for a while in confusion, I decided it was a decent, lovely film and I would like to watch it again. Perhaps I’ll even get my friends to come over and we can play “spot Hugo Weaving” (I have an advantage because I know he actually plays the stern and muscular female nurse in the rest home, ha-ha, they’ll never guess…)