Cloud Atlas (The Wachowskis & Tom Tykwer, 2012)

Converting David Mitchell's best-selling 2004 novel into a film with any degree of success is a hugely ambitious undertaking, withe its six interlinked storylines spanning eras past, present and future. You can see what the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer were thinking when they decided to split directorial duties between the stories, giving them separate flavours and thereby helping to distinguish them rapidly from each other, particularly as the film is even more fragmented and flitting than the novel, to the extent that a spell of ten seconds will repeatedly contain images from four eras. On the other hand, the star of the Matrix directors is on the wane and Tykwer might still have been better off going it alone. Perhaps tackling the sci-fi action sequences of the future sections gave him cold feet. Unfortunately, those are then also the weakest parts.
The same actors turn up from era to era as characters of different nationalities and even ethnicities. This is meant to emphasise the interconnectedness of all things but frequently ends up being very counter-productive, as at best it means the viewer is constantly playing I-Spy with the cast in the new disguises instead of following events, while at worst some of the accents - was Tom Hanks going for Scottish or Polish at one point? - and prothestic make-up jobs are so flimsy that the ambience is well and truly temporarily shattered. And it is very dependent on building up a poetically portentous mood to get the viewer on its side. Few films over recent decades have tried so much, and it must get some indulgence for that bravery. The soundtrack, as we have come to expect from Tykwer, is frequently sumptuous and the photography is breath-taking at times.
It is frustrating, though, because there's ultimately less philosophical pith than there is gloss. You may find yourself at the end having spent nearly three hours totally sucked in through sensory overload and yet strangely not full up at all.

5/10