Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is a film about epic love that transcends time and space, and this love motivates the future and creates webs toward freedom. Directed by siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, the film presents six stories with little to no relationship. These stories are edited in a back and forth manner that may be frustrating for most audience members, but the film can a real treat for the daring viewer who doesn't mind doing some of the work.

The six stories all take place in various times and locations around the world. The first one takes place in the Pacific Ocean in 1849, in which Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) is heading back to California following a business trip and helps a stowaway slave (David Gyasi) find freedom. Then, in 1936's Great Britain, Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) becomes an amanuensis to an aging composer (Jim Broadbent), but Frobisher's bisexuality and notorious past may get in the way of their professional relationship. Fast forward to San Francisco, 1973, where journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) discovers a plot to cause a disaster regarding the city's new nuclear reactor, but further investigation may cost her life. Then, in present day England, book publisher Timothy Cavendish (also Jim Broadbent) gets tricked by his brother into staying in a prison-like nursing home. Further in the future, in Neo-Seoul, 2144, Sonmi-451 (Donna Bae) is a cloned waitress, who escapes her captors to become a revolutionary leader. The last story takes place in Hawaii, 106 years after "the Fall" of civilization, where primitive tribesman Zachry (Tom Hanks) helps technologically advanced Meronym (also Halle Berry) send a message to outer space.

It is clear that this is an eclectic and peculiar combination of narratives. The stories and genres they represent aren't overly inventive. The Luisa Rey story is a straight up journalistic thriller, and the Neo-Seoul scenes practically borrows the mise-en-scène from every futuristic sci-fi movie in the last 20 years. Cavendish's ordeal's is a light-hearted escape narrative reminiscent of films like The Great Escape (or more appropriately, Chicken Run). None of these films are genre redefining, but what makes them engaging are the thematic and dramatic connections that are interlaced in the stories.

It's at these moments that the film makes its most dramatic punches. There are some beautiful and poetic montages that link the stories together, and it's through these moments that make the film watchable. I found myself pretty quickly losing interest in making concrete connections and started watching the movie like I was reading a poem. I looked for repeating words and themes, and that may be the best way to approach a film this big.

Let me tell you, this is a big film. Not only is it a daunting 172 minutes, but the worlds created felt real and fully conceptualized. The city of Neo-Seoul is expansive, menacing, and futuristic, while the filmmakers' San Francisco looks straight out of the '70's, albeit an exaggerated version of it. Because each location and era is so distinct, the transitions weren't as jarring as I thought they would be. I had a good footing with every transition. The filmmakers had a rough task to make the film seem fundamentally coherent, and they were effective in doing so.

Because of the directorial collaboration, they were able to get a large, star-studded cast, and they got their use out of them. Each actor performs a different character in almost every story line, regardless of race or gender, with the help of make-up. It's pretty unnecessary, and at times, detracting . Hugo Weaving portrays a deadly assassin during the Luisa Rey story line, and then plays a brutal, female nurse in the modern day story. There are some really great performances that come out of the movie, particularly from Whishaw, Broadbent, and Bae. The film's most prominent stars are Halle Berry and Tom Hanks, as they show up in every story line. Berry does a good job with her performances, but Hanks is utterly annoying in the film. He works too hard with every role, creating distracting accents for each one.There was a particular moment in the film when Hanks' overacting and his awful make-up made the audience chuckle. The only time his acting made sense was during his main story line when he portrayed Zachry, but the problem with that story line is that everyone talks in a new slang and it's almost impossible to tell what anyone is saying.

I don't think I've seen an audience so divided in a film. I watched numerous couples leaving the theater within the first 45 minutes, while at times I heard people clap and cheer at various points. I found myself not once being bored with the film. The film works at a brisk pace, and when one story reaches its climax and begins to fall, it shifts to another story. All this shifting can drive a viewer crazy. I found myself getting frustrated because I was getting into one story, then I was being transported to another. Still, the film can be admired for its grand aspirations. While the Wachowski siblings and Tykwer are both remembered because of one film, they are noticeable for their risk taking, even if the results aren't always on the mark, like with Cloud Atlas. If you're a fan of The Tree of Life or The Fountain, then I think Cloud Atlas is something worth checking out (although, I feel like the end quality is more on par with the latter and not the former). If you're unfamiliar with either film, then I would just cautiously recommend the film. It is more than amazing when it hits the mark, but also crashes and burns more than it falls flat. Yet, I see Cloud Atlas as a film that will be widely studied and dissected in classrooms in the years to come.

Werckmeister Harmonies

Werckmeister Harmonies, directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitsky, is a pallid drama set in the Hungarian plains. The directing duo presents to us a bitterly cold and dry village that is on edge due to the emergence of a grotesque and supernatural circus coming through town. We view this sense of dread through the eyes of the main character, János (Lars Randolph).

János is the town's paper deliverer and caretaker for the town's most acclaimed citizen, a music theorist. János is dewy-eyed and fascinated with how the world works and contains a spiritual wonderment. He keeps an astronomical poster by his bed, and in the first scene, he lectures the drunks at the bar about the rotation of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.

Every scene features János, and rarely does the camera linger far away from him. The audience gets a good sense of his curiosity when the citizens start ranting about a traveling circus that features a giant stuffed whale and the shadowy Prince, a demagogue who is rumored to possess magnetic powers that can rip trees out of the ground. The citizens take extra measures to safeguard their houses, but János is excited by all the commotion. 

Randolph holds the weight of the film well. This isn't a character piece, with the pictures and the emotions they create being the true main character of the film, but Randolph gets the message across with his subtle aura of wisdom, loneliness and reflection. János is built up so that if anyone could make sense of the current events, it would be him.

When the circus arrives, it enters in a ridged, pieced together metal box. János is the not only the first in line to see the rotting whale, but the only one in line. János acclaims that the whale is the event of the century, but no one in the village will listen to his glowing review, for they fear what will happen when the Prince shows up and gives a speech to the growing audience. Many men from different parts of the country have gathered around the box to listen to the Prince, and when he gives his rabble-rousing speech, everything will change. 

The increasing anxiety is created masterly by the directors' decision to compose the film with only 39 tracking shots. With the film being 145 minutes long, that is an incredibly small number of shots. To put it in perspective, film editor and sound designer Walter Murch stated that the standard movie contains an average of 5,000 cuts. The film's long and expertly choreographed shots allow the viewer to remain, unbroken, in the scene. The movement of the camera flows so smoothly that you don't notice that a there hasn't been a cut in the last five minutes. It's like watching a film without really blinking.

This realist approach to the film's sparse editing highlights the images that the Tarr, Hranitsky and cinematographer Patrick de Ranter have created. The air looks thin and frigid, like it will crack the skin of your hands. There is no warmth in the sunlight, and at nighttime, even the shadows have shadows. And when the chaos comes, you can feel the energy irrupt, but that, too, is cold. There is a sense that the town was in dire conditions even before the commotion with the circus.

The film takes its time to get to the action, and much of it takes place off-screen. Also, the ending may be a bit of a letdown for some, but Werchmeister Harmonies is a meditative, strange, and demanding look at how quickly widespread manipulation can sprout when the soil is right.

Opening Credits

"...they were shadows of the past that transported me to locations untouched by my fingers and mind."

"Having a critic praise you is like having a hangman say you've got a pretty neck."
-Eli Wallach

Movie promoters pepper their trailers with snippets from critics that praise the film. Every film seems to be the "best movie of the year" or the "funniest, saddest, scariest, most powerful thing I've seen," but does that really affect your choices in movies? Most likely, you're in the same boat as me and don't pay attention to the words that fly on the screen. So, why do we care what these "hot shots" have to say? What is the point of critics, period? Are they suppose to be our society's taste makers? I don't think so, because, if that was the case, I would be no better than Ratatouille's Anton Ego. As a critic, I see myself as someone who is a fan of the cinema, a student who knows a thing or two about movies, and someone trying to start a conversation about the phenomena that is film.

Movies have always resonated with me considerably since I was very young. I was a child that respected sleep and the bedtime, but I remember begging my parents to allow me to stay up past my bedtime so I could watch the Oscars, except in 1997, when Titanic was winning every award possible. Even at the ripe age of eleven, I asked myself, "what's the big deal?" The things I loved about the Oscars was that it was one grand night that people got together and conversed about their favorite movies they saw that year and reminisced about films from the past. The montages of past award winners were a favorite of mine. Movies from different eras and countries flashed on our tiny T.V. screen, and I said to myself, "I want to see all of those movies." Movies weren't just entertainment to me; they were shadows of the past that transported me to locations untouched by my fingers and mind.

I'm currently studying media and culture at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida after a couple of years of being uninspired. After high school, I was a nursing student in Nebraska. After learning that the medical field is a pursuit that requires 100% commitment, which I did not have, I found myself out of college and working at a bank. In my spare time, I would visit the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center (aka, The Ross) in Lincoln, Nebraska with my good friend and fellow filmophile, Justin Senkbile. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the University of Lincoln film studies class would show films at the Ross for their students, but everyone was welcomed. It was the first time I saw movies at the theater that weren't blockbusters or new releases. I discovered Public Enemy (1931), Hold Your Man (1933), and The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which was the film that rattled my bones and changed the way I viewed films all together. It was those nights that made me realize that I didn't just want to be a fan of movies, I wanted to be sucked into them.

So, I have a couple of years of film and media studies under my belt, and now I'm following my passion to do critical writing. That is the point of this blog; it is the new chapter for my written voice. I want your help, dear reader. I want to know if you're interested in what I have to say, even if our opinions match or not. Do you agree with me that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer movies stink, or do you disagree; but either way, did you want to and continue to read the whole article? To be crass, opinions are like buttholes; everyone has one. I want my role as a critic to showcase ways that cinema works or doesn't work for me, with the films being my examples.  I'm trying to enter in the discourse of film, art, culture, and everything else that wraps around the cinema. That's all I care about. Are my opinions clear and my judgments justifiable? Let me know! Help me walk this tightrope that is critical writing, and I'll have a lot more fun.

-Jonas A. McCaffery