With six main narratives, three directors, a cast of familiar faces transformed - with varying degrees of success - by prosthetics and make-up into a multitude of roles there's a sense of folly to this epic adaptation of David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas.


Raising the $100 million budget outside of studios, this is also the most expensive independent film to date, and, rather unfortunately found itself receiving a critical drubbing and box office failure upon its release in North America.


Which is a shame, as the film is - though by no means perfect (and how many films are?) - a thoughtful, intelligent, imaginative, humourous, intriguing, ambitious, flawed, exciting journey.  Examining, rather broadly, the nature of interconnectivity and repetition, it is, at its best a symphony of cinema, gloriously intercutting such disparate scenes as an ocean voyage in 1849 with a futuristic Neo Seoul in 2144, yet never do they jar or does the audience lose focus on all the spinning plates and, for that, editor Alexander Berner should take every editing gong going.

Wisely the directors (Andy and Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer) focus on the over-arching thematic elements, creating a throughline in the narrative beyond just the notion of 'everything is connected'.  The recurring actors popping up in different stories is not just a gimmick, but a way of helping visualise the genetic threads that pass on throughout time, because, of course, if you are here now then an aspect of you and your DNA has existed throughout eternity.  They play it for laughs when necessary as well, Hugo Weaving playing a brutal female matron for example, and occasionally an actor pops up in a near invisible fleeting cameo, but, playing 'Spot the Star' is merely a distraction from the film's strengths, and whilst, as a viewer, there is occasionally a moment where your brain announches "That's Tom Hanks" it hardly ever pulls you out of the film, which is an incredible feat considering how bold some of their casting choices are.

Stylistically each story has its own feel, again allowing the fluid intercutting of these many strands, and only on some occasions does the picture feel like one of those 'portmanteau' films, such as Paris Je T'Aime or New York Stories.  However, unlike those pictures where some sequences failed whilst others flew, there are no completely weak links here, it is only in brief moments that the mixture doesn't quite coalesce into something wondrous and, perhaps most disappointingly, the final result, when all the strands should come together, isn't as soaring as one might hope.  Maybe this is a side effect of the shift from Mitchell's narrative to this more criss-cross movie narrative?

It almost feels counterproductive to single out cast members for appraisal, as nobody lets the team down, and this is, moreso than most, a true ensemble picture with a sort of Brechtian disregard for an audience's need to feel totally commited to the reality of which they are presented.  The film, and indeed the performances, are more concerned with the intention of the piece, and, in that respect it is a stunningly orchestrated undertaking and one that successfully conducts your emotions, making you laugh in one scene, before the chills shoot up your spine in the next, or bringing tears to your eyes in another.

It's earnest, it's wildly, almost ludicrously ambitious, it's not entirely successful in these ambitions, and it's not as complex as it might seem - or, may indeed, think it is - but it is utterly heartfelt, comprised of a certain beautiful, emotional simplicity that tries to make sense of this whimsical existence we all share.  As far as pontifications on the meaning of life, or even what it is to be human, there are far greater and less mawkish expressions than this, but - and maybe this is the 'Marmite' quality of this film that has seen it wind up on an almost equal share of Best and Worst lists - this film isn't trying to tell you something you don't know, it's just a bright, beaming celebration of the best parts of the human spirit, therefore playing up the good and evil of humankind, whether that's by having Hugh Grant as a towering cannibal warrior or by turning Halle Berry into an Asian man.

Undoubtedly one of the year's most interesting films, a curious and passionate picture that ultimately feels like a big hope filled hug.