2. Cloud Atlas
This bold and beautiful masterpiece was the first film I saw after my father died this October, and to call it a healing experience would be a profound understatement. Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings have laid it all on the line with Cloud Atlas, have opened their hearts as fully as possible and offered an artistic window into their own deep-seated beliefs on love, life, death, friendship, and so much more. It is rare I see filmmakers work so hard to hide so little, to use cinematic expression to its fullest to relate such intensely personal thoughts, feelings, and philosophies. Yet this is what Cloud Atlas does, and it achieves every single one of its goals so effectively that when I saw the film, I swear I could feel my father’s spirit in the theatre, watching the movie alongside me, revived by the film’s blindingly beautiful belief in the eternal marks one life can leave on others, and on the world at large.
This is filmmaking at its most daring, innovative, and astoundingly heartfelt; that it was largely ignored by critics and audiences this October is no matter. Like the souls of its characters, Cloud Atlas will echo and resonate across the eons, a potent epitome of humanity’s wondrous ability to express emotion through art.
Cloud Atlas is currently playing in select theatres nationwide and will arrive on DVD and Blu-Ray February 5th, 2013.Â
And the number one film of 2012 is…
