Cloud Atlas: Shrugged Off The Box Office?

The much-awaited epic drama Cloud Atlas is now playing  in US theaters, and looks like despite the hype it's not doing that well in the box office. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 62%  rating and it's causing divisiveness among movie buffs. I was one of the many film fans who have been awaiting this film to hit the local cinemas but not anymore. One critic considered it as a "self-indulgent, ambitious mess", and if this is truly the case it's no wonder it's been overtaken by political drama Argo (starring Ben Affleck and Bryan Cranston) both in revenues and rave reviews. Reportedly, producers spent $102 million in making this three-hour film (with the German government putting in some dough) and with just $9.4 million in opening profit, the producers' ROI presents, er, a cloudy picture.

It seems the problem lies in the storytelling. It is based on David Mitchell's novel of the same title, and naysayers agree that this film is one of those great literature that goes awry when translated into the visual medium. I've seen the trailer and definitely the visual effects and the cinematography are amazing, but the plot line simply, well, flatlined according to critics. It is six interwoven stories at different time frames in different locales. Sounds convoluted, right? Well, it is. And because the film uses basically the same actors, there's the valiant attempt to transform them from one character to another. But such attempt proved futile in my opinion because I've seen excerpts of  "yellowfaced" Jim Sturgess playing the role of a Korean liberator; and my, oh my, it was downright awful. If the directors thought they were going to pull it off with the prosthetic slant eyes, they decided wrong. For me, believability has gone out of the window with a slam when I saw Sturgess as Hae-Joo Chang.

Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo Chang in Cloud Atlas