Anonymous asked:
Sure have! Watched the movie first then read the book, as is MY WONT.
Now granted this was in 2012 so bear with my memory, but when I read the book I remember being really pleased with how the Wachowskis + Tom Tykwer had chosen to adapt the structure. Film is an inherently different medium, and what’s beautiful and affecting in a novel isn’t always the same thing that’s beautiful and affecting on screen. Folding the sequence of stories neatly in two as David Mitchell had done, going up up up in time then back down step by step, is so stunning in book form, like there were transitions there that had me wailing out loud in joyous sorrow. Meanwhile, the movie was able to approach the multiple storylines differently. What they chose, and what I think was a better impact choice for cinema, was to build these sweeping assemblages of fractured, layered visuals and moments strung together with that score, and I remember just being awash with goosebumps in the theater during some of those sequences. And that’s what I want out of my adaptations: show me that your loyalty is to feeling. Be creative and boundary pushing with your choices like the author was with theirs. It might mean you step away from what’s on the page, but in doing so step closer to the heart of the matter.
Now if I recall, there may have been some other changes in how the reincarnation/soul fluidity worked? But honestly that slash is there because I was never super clear on that in the book either! So I didn’t mind. Strictly laying out what was going on there was not a priority of the novel, so I feel like you’re free to adjust that in your movie if you want.
(Also, because you can’t talk about Cloud Atlas without mentioning this, I didn’t find it to be toooo much of an ethical problem that the actors also played small roles as characters of races besides their own, but only because this was a multi-racial cast who were ALL playing other races at various points. It frequently looked ridiculous, I take issue aesthetically, but in this particular case, with the intentions of this particular film, didn’t find it totally morally beyond the pale. However, while I experienced the race-bending as a weird but egalitarian thing everyone was freely taking part in, I know that for some simply seeing a white person in makeup to play a non-white character is painful regardless of context, and saying how I personally may have felt is not meant to imply my experiences are universal, nor should be!)
