The Wachowskis' adaptation of David Mitchell's sprawling epic Cloud Atlas​ can be described as a "whirlwind kaleidoscope" but does the film work? http://bit.ly/1UVmgtW
shareI'm reading the book right now, and I'm really enjoying it. It's extremely well written.
shareThe book was decent. I enjoyed it.
But I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't seen and fallen in love with the movie, which was exceptional.
I read the novel way before seeing the film. I absolutely loved Mitchell's book - great description, very good pacing, six different writing styles in one novel, solid characters, and I felt the novel could have been much longer to be honest.
The film was extremely sub-standard. First off, I don't know why their felt the need to put the stories all over the place - the novel is completely chronological, and you get the lovely surprise of reading the second half of every story in backwards chronological order. The film fails to do that.
The use of 'yellowface' was also offensive - for the characters in the future who happen to be Asian, why didn't they cast an Asian for the past characters and give them 'whiteface' instead? Or even better, they could've cast an Asian Halle Berry, an Asian Tom Hanks, etc. I'm sure there are Asians that look like these actors.
The film was also way too short to do justice to the novel. The novel deserves one film for each of the six stories. In fact, it deserves 11 films - two halves for the first five stories, and one long film for the six (and actually, the 'middle') story. The film feels horribly rushed, and to me is a completely mess.
The novel is extremely coherent, and very easy to follow. The film is all over the place.
Novel: 9/10
Film: 3/10