talboldo-73309
Joined Sep 2016
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Reviews7
talboldo-73309's rating
The novel is one of the most beautiful I've read. It incorporates an intricate, compelling story with a philosophical ideal of individual rights, which is difficult to come across. The timeliness of the story is profound. It shines a light on what is happening to the healthcare system in the United States. Overall, as you read you find yourself surrounded by a sense of life similar to Ayn Rand's, and the hints of Cyrano de Bergerac, or the Phantom of the opera, are a pleasure to experience.
It saddens me that the movie could not be produced with a budget worthy of the story and its message. At the same time, I am in awe of the author's tenacity to bring her story to the stage. I recommend watching the movie with the expectation of seeing a play. This will compensate for any jarring experience that occurs because the movie is a low-budget production. The beautiful storyline and compelling, emotionally-invested acting makes watching this movie worthwhile.
It saddens me that the movie could not be produced with a budget worthy of the story and its message. At the same time, I am in awe of the author's tenacity to bring her story to the stage. I recommend watching the movie with the expectation of seeing a play. This will compensate for any jarring experience that occurs because the movie is a low-budget production. The beautiful storyline and compelling, emotionally-invested acting makes watching this movie worthwhile.
Imagine the fairytale Sleeping Beauty meeting the novel Robinson Crusoe, and then going somewhere none of us has gone before. This is a beautiful love story, and at its heart lies the question of sacrifice, which is so often associated with loving. It is my view, however, that love is not the destruction of the self but the identification of the self, and the story plot-theme allows for this identification to happen--[Spoiler: "But you will be alone" VRS "I will never see you again."}
It seems that the script was meddled with over time. I wish the mentor figure was introduced early and permitted to play a significant psychological part in the development of the love story. His death scene would then have had more meaning by focusing the question of remaining alone or enhancing life as two individuals side-by-side. The mentor would also tighten the conflict of telling or not telling the love object of the sacrifice involved and explore this Gordian knot until it unravels.
I think the photo booth (deleted scenes) was a brilliant idea that must have been cut out of the ending too. The photo booth could have been used to show a glimpse of the life of the two people aboard ship across time. I wish five more minutes were granted to the story to accomplish this via the eyes of the captain of the ship.
Finally, I wish the "book" which documented their life had been shown to survive them, appearing in a book store in the new world, as Robinson Crusoe is still found in bookstores on our plant. In this way, Aurora's dream of impacting the world of men by her writing would have been shown to fulfill itself because she took this path that began with apparent sacrifice--thereby showing that the path we set ourselves to a goal may not be the right path to travel, or the only one.
Thank you for this beautiful love story and for the look at space travel. It felt so possible and real, a dream to long for. And as for the love of two people that can exist alone, cocooned so to speak while surrounded by many, many people, I am grateful that I know this to be real.
It seems that the script was meddled with over time. I wish the mentor figure was introduced early and permitted to play a significant psychological part in the development of the love story. His death scene would then have had more meaning by focusing the question of remaining alone or enhancing life as two individuals side-by-side. The mentor would also tighten the conflict of telling or not telling the love object of the sacrifice involved and explore this Gordian knot until it unravels.
I think the photo booth (deleted scenes) was a brilliant idea that must have been cut out of the ending too. The photo booth could have been used to show a glimpse of the life of the two people aboard ship across time. I wish five more minutes were granted to the story to accomplish this via the eyes of the captain of the ship.
Finally, I wish the "book" which documented their life had been shown to survive them, appearing in a book store in the new world, as Robinson Crusoe is still found in bookstores on our plant. In this way, Aurora's dream of impacting the world of men by her writing would have been shown to fulfill itself because she took this path that began with apparent sacrifice--thereby showing that the path we set ourselves to a goal may not be the right path to travel, or the only one.
Thank you for this beautiful love story and for the look at space travel. It felt so possible and real, a dream to long for. And as for the love of two people that can exist alone, cocooned so to speak while surrounded by many, many people, I am grateful that I know this to be real.
Cloud Atlas falls from a very great height in its charting of a celestial road map for mankind.
Follow the birthmark not the faces--is the point of enlightenment in this movie, but it happens too early. After that, the movie has nothing to offer.
In recognition of Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces", there are beautiful visual mentions of "our" greatest tales: Jean Val Jean's escape into the sewers of Paris, Frodo crouching under the bridge, follow the white rabbit... But this movie, this myth, is a mess- chaos in the nursery, petulant imagination set free and not one flight of fancy worth following. Even following the birthmark as it fulfills its final shape into a shooting star fails to add substance to this "Cloud", which like all clouds remains diaphenous.
The closest the story comes to any "meaning" is the birthmark which holds all the "virtues" of mankind: courage, compassion, loyalty, love, etc. But each storyline is made of flatlining scenes; and worse, as the history of lives interweaves haphazard across the screen, the thematic "glue" is just as much of a cliche.
There is one beauty to this cloud. Breathing life into the lifeless stories is the puzzle of deciphering familiar faces beneath the makeup artistry; and this, in turn, is only made possible as each actor reveals a kaleidoscope of possibilities within his thespian imagination.
Follow the birthmark not the faces--is the point of enlightenment in this movie, but it happens too early. After that, the movie has nothing to offer.
In recognition of Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces", there are beautiful visual mentions of "our" greatest tales: Jean Val Jean's escape into the sewers of Paris, Frodo crouching under the bridge, follow the white rabbit... But this movie, this myth, is a mess- chaos in the nursery, petulant imagination set free and not one flight of fancy worth following. Even following the birthmark as it fulfills its final shape into a shooting star fails to add substance to this "Cloud", which like all clouds remains diaphenous.
The closest the story comes to any "meaning" is the birthmark which holds all the "virtues" of mankind: courage, compassion, loyalty, love, etc. But each storyline is made of flatlining scenes; and worse, as the history of lives interweaves haphazard across the screen, the thematic "glue" is just as much of a cliche.
There is one beauty to this cloud. Breathing life into the lifeless stories is the puzzle of deciphering familiar faces beneath the makeup artistry; and this, in turn, is only made possible as each actor reveals a kaleidoscope of possibilities within his thespian imagination.