demoncleaner
Posts: 2166
Joined: 3/10/2005 From: Belfast
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Olaf Warning! Thesis about the meaning of this doggerel incoming. I really enjoyed the film, personally. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm usually opposed to reviews of film adaptations that dwell for ages on the differences between the book and the movie, but it seems necessary in this case because of the book in question – specifically, the way that it's a book about books and how the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer work around this. The most obvious stylistic predecessor to David Mitchell's novel is Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller (both pull the 'multiple stories stopping halfway through' shtick), but the comparison is important for what they don't have in common more than what they do have in common. Both are books about writing and reading when it comes down to it of course, but by closing off the stories it starts, Cloud Atlas assumes we actually want to know how they end rather than just treating them as another game or writing exercise. In contrast to Calvino, where writing is writing and reading is reading, Mitchell's book instead suggests that these characters have some value to us after all, and these silly pastimes of reading and writing might actually have some function in a real-world context. 'We're not beginning to... to... mean something?' This is an offputting concept for many people. The generally accepted approach in critical commentary has only recently turned away from the more self-contained (self-absorbed?) version of literature that doesn't 'pretend' to have any real-life significance. It's interesting to consider why – is it a genuine lack of belief in art's ability to convey emotion? Or is it that we'd rather it didn't, for reasons of the slightly uncomfortable too-much-information variety? We might be more comfortable with Cloud Atlas if it stuck to commenting on itself, rather than commenting on us, but a desire to comment on Us is its primary motivation. The fact that it does so through an analysis of its medium (ie how the way we read and write reflects who we are and what we do), doesn't diminish that motivation. Which brings us onto the question of structure, ie Cloud Atlas the novel vs Cloud Atlas the movie. The novel's structure obviously reflects that element of reading half of a book and needing to finish it (a crafty way of getting you to finish it too, well played Mitchell), but also consider it another way. If you picture it spatially, the novel literally looks like a book inside a book inside a book etc, while structurally reversing it (the Letters From Zedelghem section is 'inside' the Pacific Journal, but the latter is in the text of the former). This probably seems like me overexamining this, but these two reversed structures is important to both the novel's recurring themes of containment/freedom, and the earlier contentious point about literature having some value beyond its own literature-ness. By suggesting that each of the texts exist both inside and outside of each other (and by extension, the text as a whole), there's a clear break with the 'Calvino approach', as you might call it. I dislike the phrase 'more than literature' because it implies a triviality in literature as a concept, but Mitchell gets this as well. These pulpy genre stories have value outside of their own literary existence, as evidenced by the big connected souls lark, but it's because of their literary nature that they have this value. The fact that Luisa Rey is a fictional character in Timothy Cavendish's world, for instance, is ultimately irrelevant; they're all fictional after all, and you care about them all the same. All well and good, but Cloud Atlas is a movie now and it can't adopt the structure of a novel that's so intimately connected to novels as a concept. Which is why the cut-up structure of the film – something I was initially nervous about as a fan of the book – is absolutely essential to why Cloud Atlas works as a film. This really is a masterful work of editing, and that's because the Wachowskis/Tykwer understand that the edit is the filmic equivalent of what Mitchell was looking to highlight with his novel's structure. Eisenstein and Kuleshov argued that montage was the essence of cinema, and they were correct: instead of being a film about books, like a bad adaptation would have been, it's a film about films in the same spirit. Hugo Weaving talks about the consequences of upsetting the 'order of things' or whatever towards the end of the film, and both book and film offer an extremely effective way of upending that order in narrative terms. I might even venture to say that the film's continuous cutting and ensuing narrative disconnection (in a good way) makes it a more powerful challenge to that order than the novel – there's a great poignancy in Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae's characters being together at the 'end' of the film, even though we had just seen them separated minutes earlier centuries in the future. It's moments like the aforementioned that mean the multiple casting stunt just about comes off for the directors. I had my doubts when Tom Hanks appeared with a really awful Irish accent, but the fact that Zachry and Meronym's love for each other feels 'right' when juxtaposed with Isaac and Luisa's meeting in the 1970s makes it worthwhile. (My only complaint is that Ben Whishaw was underused outside of the 1930s scenes, since he was by far the best thing about the film performance-wise.) As for the reincarnation motif – I preferred the more ambiguous allegorical approach taken by the book, but once again the more literal evocation of this idea in the film is borne out of a realisation that films and books are different mediums. The unfortunate thing about this literal version of the reincarnation theme is that it leaves the film open to accusations of wishy-washy New Age spiritualism, which is sad because it's a film that's very heavily invested in the idea of faith in a more secular way. Sonmi isn't actually a god, but it doesn't diminish the real effect she has on Hae-Joo Chang's life (for example). The spiritual dimension implied throughout isn't as important as the faith human beings have in each other – Autua and Adam Ewing on the boat, Frobisher and Sixsmith, Zachry and Meronym (spelled out pretty bluntly with the 'thank Sonmi' 'no, thank you' line), etc etc. Yet again this brings us back to the idea of a form of art involved in the world beyond itself: it's a film about people because those texts are produced by people. I've seen the film regularly accused of emotional and intellectual fraudulence – all the negative reviews have at least one of the stock 'it's not as smart as it thinks it is'/'it's trite and corny'/'it's manipulative' criticisms in there somewhere. This is a really similar point to the one about the undetermined veracity of stories in the novel being perceived as a point to latch onto for criticism I guess. I couldn't disagree more: it's a completely, bracingly honest film. It's possibly too honest, in the same way The Fountain is too honest. There's no irony (except of the dramatic variety) in Cloud Atlas. It's clear and upfront that it's a film, but it wants you to be emotionally invested anyway, just as the novel wants you to be emotionally invested even though it's very obviously a novel. I don't blame anyone for being slightly put off by this – it's a big ask for anyone when the question is as clear as it is in Cloud Atlas. But it's the same thing every film of this ilk asks its viewer, and while the question isn't always front and centre, it's always there. Some might point to a film like Precious, to give an example off the top of my head of a recent 'emotional' picture like this, but there's definitely an element of ironic detachment in that film in a quite repellent way – it can't help itself from tempering its empathy with disgust for its protagonist. Cloud Atlas on the other hand genuinely loves its protagonists, it loves itself (it is kind of pompous to be fair), and it loves you the viewer, as silly as that sounds. What Cloud Atlas requires in return is an all or nothing approach. This is why it's a love/hate film, because you either buy it or you don't with no in between. And this is why it transcends genre exercises and solipsism, because it is, more than anything, about its role in the real world. All of the characters are fictional, but your emotional response is real, so what else matters if it achieved that? 5/5 There was an episode of Neighbours showing in our canteen yesterday. The sound was low but by all accounts it was a 25 minute dramatic treatise on more secular aspects of faith such as people’s faith in one another. I know this because I asked the cleaning lady. In fairness to her I don’t think this was a wishy washy intepretation of it since the song at the start “everybody needs good neighbours” set this statement out in bracingly honest fashion. Indeed, when I thought about it all through last night, this theme, was not just literally a “theme” but it was very much “thematically” a theme too. This forthright overture played at the beginning of the episode, and then also, with an almost pronounced intent played at the end too. This structural “bookending” for me really hermetically sealed the literal fact that these people lived in proximity to one another, literally, but also very much metaphorically as well. Now you’ll think I’m being churlish here but I’m just going for an exercise in conflation, an instinct that begins very much with the film makers and taken up by the fans. What’s becoming apparent from the release of the film is that the option to enjoy the source prose for what it is upfront, that is, a stylistic exercise in genre, is diminishing to the point where the absolute prescription is to consider Mitchell’s book as some insufferable Pablo Coelho type hippy ponderance. I giggled when I saw the Little White Lies verdict which said this was a film “for people who’s one goal in life is to swim with dolphins”. No matter what cruelty I spun at the film since Friday I didn’t actually believe that, but if the demand really is to think on these set of stories purely as cosmic occurrence and not based on the pleasures of genre fiction then that verdict is consolidating around the film. I do like a good discussion and I do like it when a film comes along that creates discussion. For that reason I’m not normally a person who discourages “over-thinking” (there shouldn’t really be such a thinkg generally speaking). But I keep coming back to who the purveyors of this incitement to thought are in this case. And do you know, for two philosophers, the Wachowski’s do a hell of a good fight scene, that’s all I’m saying. For a philosopher David Mitchell is a hell of a good genre fiction writer. For all the substantiating quotes Olaf brings up this is still a film with the line “but what is an ocean but a lot of little drops”. That’s….that’s brilliant. That’s the level of dialectic I would qualify the Matrix people making. That’s fantastic.
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"I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit."
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