Filmtracks: Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer/Johnny Klimek/Reinhold Heil)

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Written 8/25/22

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Buy it... if you are prepared to render a verdict on one of the most polarizing "love it or hate it" scores of the digital era, a work that requires careful deliberation in context to appreciate.

Avoid it... if you've never been able to warm up to the other scores by these composers, Cloud Atlas exhibiting their tendencies towards lifeless, soulless, and passionless performances.

Cloud Atlas: (Tom Tykwer/Johnny Klimek/Reinhold Heil) Filmmaker ambition is an admirable force to be reckoned with, but it cannot alone dictate success. Based on the sprawling 2004 book by David Mitchell, the 2012 cinematic adaptation of Cloud Atlas was many years in the making by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. It struggled financially and barely saw the light of day, its plight supported through the years by lead actor Tom Hanks. As one of the most expensive independent and German films ever, Cloud Atlas sought to convey the impossible in even its lengthy running time, spanning many centuries in six segments that were filmed separately by the directors. (Ten years later, it would have been a television series.) Actors rotate through each segment to represent the souls of characters that persist throughout time and place, with each segment building upon a narrative element from a prior one. Issues of existentialism, sexuality, politics, health, and everything in between are explored in the vast tapestry of this tale, begging for repeat viewings to appreciate. Regardless of how the consequences of life choices are examined in Cloud Atlas, the core commonality in most of the segments is that terrible things happen to people and humanity is, essentially, corrupted by malice, stupidity, and a severe lack of empathy. While some see the film as exemplary high art of intellectual prowess, including Hanks, who continues to advocate for it years later, others inevitably find it immensely depressing in that souls, despite glimmers of hope here and there, can be involved in repeatedly unsavory outcomes if reincarnated. The movie remains among the most polarizing of its generation, with critics largely loving or hating it for those reasons. Audiences generally didn't understand or embrace the picture, and abysmal box office returns reinforced persistent studio hesitancy about its prospects. All of the same elements of taste and success apply to the soundtrack for the film, which plays an outsized role in the narrative because of the prominent role of music in one of the early segments.

The score for Cloud Atlas was provided by Tykwer himself alongside Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil; the trio was known as the "Pale 3" and had collaborated on many Tykwer films previously. Orchestrator Gene Pritsker provided arrangements on the main themes. Their film scores have tended to defy convention artistically, and Cloud Atlas is certainly no exception. Highly praised within the film music community in 2012, the Cloud Atlas score remains as polarizing as the film itself. Some listeners appreciate Tykwer, Klimek, and Heil's approach to adapting their thematic base to distinctive styles over each of the six segments. Others will recognize that strategy but be unable to overcome the sheer misery that much of the music conveys. There is no doubt that the composers' choice to evolve the score's two main thematic ideas over the centuries has appeal, especially as those ideas eventually find their footing. Adapting melodies to strikingly different circumstances has undeniable appeal. But if the actual rendering of those themes is lifeless, repetitive, grating, simplistic, and prickly throughout most of the picture, then does the intelligence behind them even matter? This is the question that will determine your level of passion or tolerance for the music of Cloud Atlas. Sadly, the score's bleak demeanor is exacerbated by the offensively obnoxious harmonies of the themes, the composers' identities not entirely pleasant even in their most tonally accessible performances. The lack of consistency in the instrumental renderings is not as much a problem in context as it is on album, but the score does struggle to clearly enunciate smart instrumental carry-overs from segment to segment. There's a little bit of everything thrown into the ensemble, though not as creatively as one would hope. Pritsker's neo-classical orchestrations are defining in a few segments, though the middle batch explores more synthetic, percussive, and choral influences. The colors applied to the music of Cloud Atlas are just as dull as the constructs, though, the atmospheres often cloudy and understated in such a way as to suggest intentionally brainy light-handedness that sucks the life out of the recording.

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Rather than discerning distinctive personalities in the segments of Cloud Atlas via their instrumental or genre choices, the listener receives differences that are noticeable but not appreciable; one has to be paying more attention than necessary to discern the meanings of the stylistic distinctions even though they are fairly evident. Most will likely find the consistently dour demeanor of each segment's base modes to be the defining characteristic, as the composers find a way in each time period to suppress hope and grate at your nerves. Such dissatisfaction goes well beyond the score's unpleasantly dissonant atmospheres and crescendos. Part of the challenging environment in the score for Cloud Atlas is due to the aforementioned mismanagement of harmonies in almost Carter Burwell fashion. The composers' efforts to generate intrigue via basslines that don't harmonically match melodic or other action in the treble is a constant frustration in the work. The two dominant themes include the source-like "The Cloud Atlas Sextet for Orchestra," the labor of love for the main character in one of the earlier segments. Its descending figures have promise in their elegance, but the theme is intentionally staggered in its overlapping performances as to suggest the plot's notions on reincarnation, and the resulting recording has a tendency to annoy. Amazingly, the premise in the story is that this composition is considered by characters to be among the best of all time, and it simply isn't. That alone is worthy of some eye rolls, as it's difficult to credibly believe that characters on screen could be mesmerized by the decent but generally prickly and disharmonious piece. The primary seven-note phrase of the theme prevails in several cues in the score as the piece and its on-screen creator shape the future. Debuting with gusto in the middle of "Cloud Atlas Opening Title," the sextet theme is suspenseful and melodramatic in "Temple of Sacrifice," informative of the slapping in "Chasing Luisa Rey," and reduced to ghosts in the string figures of "Sonmi's Discovery." Its accompaniment on muted horn and piano over the turmoil in "New Direction" is commendable but rather shallow and underdeveloped in its rendering, lacking much-needed intensity and vitality.

The actual main theme of Cloud Atlas is what the composers deem the "Atlas March," which is a humorous misnomer in that there is really nothing march-like about it outside of some extremely tepid rhythmic thumping in the bass region that struggles to provide depth or any sense of importance in "Cloud Atlas Opening Title." It has more in common with a stagnant John Barry romance leftover, in fact. The idea is introduced in the solo piano and slight strings of "Prelude: The Atlas March" and is afforded the hesitant main title performance before diminishing its presence in the remainder of the first half of the work. The composers finally return in full to the idea at 1:41 into "Sonmi-451 Meets Chang" in arguably the theme's best performance within one of the segments, its bass particularly resounding. Even here, though, the idea is extremely simplistic in its arrangement and questionable in its harmonics. The theme struggles to find anything new to express in "Kesselring" and eventually becomes a nearly constant presence after its brighter expression in "All Boundaries are Conventions," though even here the pacing of the theme is never altered. The composers seem to have no qualms about maintaining the same meter, key, and pace for the theme in each of its performances, unable to convincingly manipulate it beyond its connective purpose. The layers of instruments and resulting volume can and do change, as in the apocalyptic choral accompaniment and solo piano of "Sonmi's Discovery," but the theme's static personality never achieves any true maturation beyond its confined origins. This stagnant lack of development affects the two standout cues of the score, "Cloud Atlas Finale," and "Cloud Atlas End Title." The former supplies the main theme in Hans Zimmer power anthem mode, from the fantasy choir on top to the pulsating strings and meandering ostinatos underneath, the composers even emulating the slow build to a false resolution with banging chimes and a deep choral sendoff. This cue on album, while guilty pleasure bait for those seeking very simplistic themes in accessible presentations, is also remembered for its embarrassingly distracting studio noise between 2:30 and 3:00 into the cue, the sounds of clanging metallic objects or shifting chairs easily disqualifying. Thereafter, the lengthy "Cloud Atlas End Title" is an immensely repetitive and tiresome presentation of the same theme.

While the main Cloud Atlas theme has an elusively wandering interlude phrase, the composers seem more enamored with the primary phrases and their shifting harmonies underneath falling progressions, this section of the theme repeating seemingly endlessly without enough variation or strength of character to merit such myopic emphasis. They can add layers to the same phrasing over and over again in "Cloud Atlas End Title," but they cannot make it any more emotive. Such is the problem with the entire soundtrack for Cloud Atlas. Harming its personality is the unattractive nature of many of its unique cues of ambience or action for individual segments. Barely audible or generally uninteresting ambience in "Luisa's Birthmark," "Papa Song," "Sloosha's Hollow," and "Catacombs" do little for the narrative. The humorous comedy of "Cavendish in Distress" and sprightly movement in "Travel to Edinburgh" improve the scenery, but their brevity only worsens the somber feelings generated by surrounding music. Straight action cues in "The Escape" and "Chasing Luisa Rey" are anonymous emulations of John Powell's standard mode, with slurring and percussion to denote slight ethnic influence; these generic string techniques and electronics are a precursor to The Matrix Resurrections. The more powerfully melodramatic tones that attempt to emerge in "New Direction," "All Boundaries are Conventions," and "The Message" lead to "Death is Only a Door," a cue that strives for ethereal revelation but fails to really connect emotionally. (Listen for more studio noise around 1:51 into that cue.) The tentative and sparse passion of these moments reminds of the serviceable but rather limp recordings of Thomas Wanker and Harald Kloser scores. It's difficult to feel any excitement or affection for music that is generated by performers who express absolutely no intensity or passionate performance inflection. The static movement of the main theme doesn't help this issue, as the performers seem to be sleepwalking through the more dramatic portions of this score. The recording mix is also dry and constricted, failing to allow the fantasy element to soar. Ultimately, the general strategy of the composers for Cloud Atlas was intelligent but the execution poor. The thematic constructs are offensively simplistic, repetitive, and obnoxious while the orchestration and performances lack enthusiasm. The result is a score that may sound superficially impressive in its ambition but is revealed to be a lifeless zombie in search for its soul. Few film scores elicit such a love it or hate it response. ** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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