CLOUD ATLAS (Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski, 2012)CLOUD
ATLAS plays connect the dots across the years in six concurrent stories
with the same primary actors playing multiple roles over the different
periods. Lawyer Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) sees firsthand the horrors of
slavery in the South Pacific islands in 1849. In his diary, later to
be published, he writes about this and his rapidly declining health on
the voyage home. Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) is reading it in 1936
as he works and stays with a famous composer in Cambridge, England. On
the side Frobisher writes “The Cloud Atlas Sextet”, which is largely
unremembered yet sought out by Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), a reporter
investigating a possible cover-up at a nuclear power plant in San
Francisco in 1973. Luisa’s
story is one that crosses the path of London book publisher Timothy
Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) in 2012. He writes about his own experiences
hiding out from a client’s thugs and has it turned into a film, part of
which is seen in 2144 Neo Seoul, Korea by server clone Sonmi-451 (Doona
Bae). Her inspirational words are passed down through an unspecified
number of years and elevate her to god-like status among the primitives
like Zachry (Tom Hanks). The
scope and ambition in CLOUD ATLAS are so enormous that the three
writer/directors--Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski--and
editor Alexander Berner don’t so much as tame novelist David Mitchell’s
unruly tangle of loosely linked plots across centuries but make it
presentable and even coherent. Berner’s editing is often nothing short
of remarkable in connecting these disparate pieces so that they seem
part of a whole. As an instructional in crosscutting, it’s quite an
achievement. CLOUD
ATLAS shouldn’t work. Sometimes it doesn’t. Prosthetics and makeup
are used to sell the transformations for those in the main cast who
switch genders and races from story to story. Often the actors look
ridiculous. The pidgin English that passes for the future language of a
post-apocalyptic tribe can sound silly. The shifts in tone from one
storytelling style to another can be jarring and incompatible.Yet
CLOUD ATLAS proves to be worthy of wrestling with its
big philosophical ideas, including the seemingly misguided ones, and
engaging with a consistent vision of fluidity among the ages and eternal
truths. For such a sprawling endeavor, CLOUD ATLAS reduces to some
basic points. At heart are the beliefs that individual voices can make a
difference across time, if not in their own, and that love is
ultimately what endures. CLOUD ATLAS is prone to sappiness and
threatens to disappear up its own tail like THE MATRIX trilogy, but it
builds to an irresistible final act celebrating the human spirit. Grade: B-
THE IRON LADY (Phyllida Lloyd, 2011)
The Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) seen at the opening of THE IRON LADY is anything but the tough and focused politician that comes to mind at the mention of her name. She’s introduced as a confused old woman trying to remain self-sufficient despite being regularly engaged in conversation with the hallucination of her dead husband Denis (Jim Broadbent). As she goes through their possessions, she remembers her humble beginning as a grocer’s daughter to her ascent to membership in Parliament and eleven and a half years as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
THE IRON LADY is akin to a procrastinating student’s hastily written term paper about Thatcher. It’s poorly structured, free of context, and superficial. There’s this lady who got sick, but she did a bunch of stuff leading Great Britain and here’s some of those things.
In a serious misstep, screenwriter Abi Morgan organizes this whirlwind tour of Thatcher’s life and career around the illness in her later years. Whatever one thinks of Thatcher’s political achievements, they are what make this story worth telling, not her failing health. Sporadic flashbacks break up THE IRON LADY’s first half hour, which wastes time looking at her current daily life. This section and the recurring visits to present day are in service of making her a pitiable character. Putting her declining mental acuity in the foreground has no dramatic value other than as a cheap ploy to enhance an already sympathetic biographical portrayal.
THE IRON LADY skims over a miniseries worth of events and crises in its timeline, particularly from Thatcher’s stint as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Without a foreknowledge of British politics much of it passes by as archival news footage and recreations in which Thatcher sticks to her guns and gets the results she wants. Little effort is given to exploring what challenges she faces and how she arrives at her decisions. (For the most part, it seems her guiding principles stem from a speech she heard her dad give long ago.) In trying to treat the conservative leader fairly, THE IRON LADY largely avoids digging into the difficult issues or dissenting opinions. It’s a matter of needing dramatic balance and narrative coloring rather than ideological evenness. THE IRON LADY just assumes Thatcher is always correct and leaves it at that.
Thatcher advances and triumphs because that’s what her biography states. Streep delivers a fine technical performance, as is to be expected, but there’s only so much she can do with a role that’s as flimsy as a construction paper figure in an elementary school student’s diorama. The barriers to winning a bigger role in the party and government are laid out in a scene with political strategists, yet what was presumably a defining period of time in her life is quickly smoothed over by Thatcher asserting that she must wear her pearls and taking a vocal lesson ripped from THE KING’S SPEECH. With everything, including the most pivotal moments, rendered in shorthand, THE IRON LADY diminishes the accomplishments of the person whose story it tells and the actress working so hard to offer a well-rounded embodiment of her.
Grade: D+
