Who's going to see this? I am a sucker for big, ambitious films like this. I know I'll probably be disappointed, but it's SUCH a brilliant book that I can't miss it. Paying the extra for the fancy reclining seat theater with the wine and cheese service for this one!
I haven't read the book, but I have been underwhelmed by the trailers so far. Nice cast, but I'm in a wait and see mode...
The book is a greatly complicated and took a while to comprehend. There are 5 or 6 stories intertwined with each other. Making it into a movie is no small feat. Several of the actors will play multiple races and even sexes over hundreds of years.
It's really, really good. It's not some big philosophical treatise; the themes of the movie aren't very complicated. It's just a fun flick. I recommend it.
It was a good try. The book is far superior, but they did a laudable job of bringing it to the screen.
http://theweek.com/article/index/235445/isnbspcloud-atlasnbspracist http://hyperallergic.com/58869/ethnic-cleansing-colorblind-casting-in-cloud-atlas/
These read like something one of my college classmates would have written my sophomore year. So worried about the identity politics that they miss the big picture. The story, and indeed the casting are not to be taken literally. It's supposed to stoke the imagination. It's a question, not an answer.
I've been comparing it to a Jackson Pollock painting. It's really cool to look at, at least to my eyes, and can stand alone just on aesthetics. You can find some things that resonate for you, personally. There are definitely obvious threads. You can connect pieces of it if you like, and try to find some order - or you can enjoy the chaotic nature of it. But you can also think it's just a big mess with no point. You can even get angry at the artist for forcing you to think about it. Ultimately, your reaction to it says something about you - and that's the cool part about it.
As far as the accusations of racism go...incredibly stupid. If it's racist for Hugh Grant to play Asian, is it racist for Halle Berry to play white, or that Asian actress to play white? Was it sexist for Hugo Weaving to play a female? Good God, talk about missing the point. That's about as good of a one paragraph (plus one sentence) review as one could possibly make. Perfect. The key to enjoying it, I believe, is deciding how much of your mind you want to invest in the hard-to-follow stuff. I found a "happy place" that worked for me.
I think people who expect everything to click at the end, they feel they wasted time. A lot of people went to this movie knowing it was six intertwined stories and expected them all to converge spectacularly with an amazing moment of clarity. But really, how could they? It's all so loose. We don't even know which of the stories is 'real'. I think we know the Luisa Rey story is fiction. But the Ewing story - it's also in a book, but we never learBut her character knows the Sextet, too, and even buys the record. And how would she know it? It's a jumble. Art reflecting life and life reflecting art. In the book, all the stories read like genre fiction to some degree. There's no absolute center. The story is just endlessly fascinating to me. If you liked it, superdave, you should read the book.
Come on, dude. Context matters. You know that. A movie, or any work, isn't a discrete package of meaning totally unconnected to its cultural context. And there is no racist history of black or Asian actors playing white. However there is a very serious racist history of white actors playing Asian. So I wouldn't label it "incredibly stupid" to call attention to that, and to raise the question: Was this racial chameleon casting really necessary? Did it serve a valuable purpose within the film? Is there another way the material could have been approached, that wouldn't have required yellow face makeup? I haven't seen the film so I can't answer those questions. But I find the dismissals to sound defensive and a little thoughtless. There's nothing wrong with taking special care when it comes to racial issues, especially when it comes to the decision to put white actors in makeup to make them appear to be another race. My honest thought is, I don't understand why it was necessary, beyond being a pretty shallow stunt.
Everything you write in the first 3 paragraphs is entirely correct. But I have seen the film, and that makes all the difference. In context, the yellowface is part and parcel of the story. If I were to criticize the movie on these grounds, here is how I would do it. The use of "whiteface" is pretty limited, while the use of yellowface is much more pronounced. I would ask the people making the film why all of the roles played by Hugh Grant, for example, couldn't have been played by an Asian actor. Or the actor who played the slave in the 1840s story...why couldn't he have played the inquisitor in the New Seoul story? I'd be interested in the answer. The answer might be that Hugh Grant is a bigger star and using him means the movie will make more money. It might be that the limits of makeup artistry made it too difficult to use the black actor as the inquisitor. Or the answer might be totally lame, and that would be evidence of racism by omission (as opposed to racism by commission.) To put it another way, I think it's stupid to say the problem was the white actor who played the Asian hero. That is a context-less criticism. I think it makes alot of sense to ask why the scenes of minorities playing other races were pretty limited compared to the major "yellowface" roles of the inquisitor and the hero in the New Seoul story. In defense of the filmmakers, I'll point out that the New Seoul story was in the, ahem, minority; it was one story out of six. So if you're going to go that route, maybe it's just a heckuva alot simpler to use all your white and black actors in yellowface in one storyline than it is to to have an Asian actor be blackface or whiteface in 5 stories. But I think it would have been interesting if, for example, Keith David (or David Keith, whatever the ******** ) play the old composer.
Regarding blackface, last Saturday I went to the Metropolitann Opera's live HD broadcast of Otello. As is all too common, the Moorishness of the title character required a bit of shading. It was interesting in this case, however: the singer's name is Johan Botha, and he's a white South African.
You are incredibly stupid and clueless. You really are an obnoxious and clueless person. Spoken like a true gringo. You like that Dave? You like being pegged into a stereotype? Today that there are significant numbers of Asian and Latino actors and actresses that should be getting these roles. Yet they don't. So when a high profile film comes out that you would expect to see a number of Asian actors in principal roles given the source material, but they aren't given roles, it raises the specter of racism. It still happens in Hollywood. You are completely oblivious regarding the opportunities still denied minorities in Hollywood and across other industries. I completely understand why it would irritate minorities.
If they wanted those roles, they should have been born white. See, I can write a nonsensical post just as well as you.
Watched the movie two weekends ago and was underwhelmed. Reading the reviews by professionals and others all seemed to suggest that it needed to be watched on the big screen, much like Avatar and Michael Mann movies. It does not. Also, there were many comments about the theme of the movie taking about an hour and a half to become clear. So I picked up the theme in the first 10+ minutes and was disappointed there was not something more. But I did not find the movie bad, either. It was a fun story, and was kind of neat to see Tom Hanks playing a "bad guy." The one part I did not understand was why they had the same actor play so many parts. It had nothing to do with the above mentioned racism or lack of casting, but more along the lines of what it served as part of the story. I have not read the book, but the movie did not make it understandable. There were also a couple of timeline events that I would like to have known more about which might have helped explain some of the connections.