The important thing is, I'm meeting new people

wehadanappointment:

taekwonjew:

Cloud Atlas (2012) Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

Cloud Atlas was a great adaptation that I ultimately did not like. The film achieves what it sets out to achieve, and I think it actually improves upon the book. It takes a complex narrative and nebulous themes and manages to make something coherent, interesting, and thematically clear (probably too clear, but whatever). I think that most of my issues lie with the source material itself, for I did not find the book entertaining or edifying, and finishing it was a chore - this also translated to the film (at least, for me - some dude clapped and hooted no less than three times, so there’s that). I can’t tell you when I last checked my watch during a film, but I did during Cloud Atlas, twice. I felt nothing for the characters in either text.

While the racial, gender, and physical morphing were very effective in strengthening the film’s arguments of interconnectedness, humanity, and tolerance, the racial morphing made me very uncomfortable. In the film, white and black actors are given “Asian eyes”, a black actress is made into a white character, an Asian actress is made into a white character and a Latina character. It all bothered me, but particularly the terrible Asianification, which looks really horrible and jarring. As (I think) the only Asian in the theatre, I found myself sinking down into my seat, like, this is how yall see me??? With just like really fucked up eyes?

The argument put forth by the film, and strengthened through the use of altered appearances of its actors, basically boils down to a “we all bleed red” argument - which, while idealistic, is neither effective nor appropriate for furthering discussions of race in this world. The fact that no non-black actors were made to play black characters makes me think that the filmmakers did understand that there was something inherently unacceptable with what they were doing. I almost feel like, if you really believe in your argument, then be faithful to it, go all the way. But the line is drawn at blackface (and rightly so), while yellowface, also an historically-loaded cinematic practice, is deemed acceptable. 

I don’t condemn the film for this, but I give it a real fucking hard side-eye. It is an ambitious film that really succeeds in its goals, but is problematic at its core.

#223 - 12/1/2012

I just finished writing up this huge rant about how race isn’t the point of the film (I haven’t read the book so I don’t know about that, but I’ve seen the movie three times so I know what I’m talking about), and I really, really don’t feel like reiterating it here, so let me just talk about one thing, specific to your review.

What you refer to as “Asianification” wasn’t supposed to make them look like us. If you recall, these characters were called “purebreds” and were treated as separate from the “fabricants,” which were the Asians that actually looked like Asians because they were Asian (Doona Bae, Zhou Xun). They make it clear in the movie that these fabricants are genetically engineered to look the way they do (like modern Asians). It’s implied, therefore, that the purebreds can’t be classified as Asian anymore, that they’re something else. And I strongly believe that even if they’d had an Asian in a purebred role, they still would have made him/her look like the other purebreds.

So I mean, I don’t know. I’m fully Asian, chinky eyes and all, and I wasn’t at all put off by the purebreds. (Well obviously, because if I were, I wouldn’t have gone to see it again.) I didn’t see it as yellowface at all. I didn’t even know people had issues with that until I went online and saw a bunch of backlash about it, and this frustrates me, because that isn’t even the point.

You clearly love the film, and that makes me really happy. A lot of people really love this film, and I’m so glad. It’s an ambitious film; it takes a challenging book that people thought would be totally unfilmable, and makes an epic, sweeping film that I thought transcended the book. I did not personally connect with the film as you did, but I hope it was clear that I thought this was because of failings in the source material, and not necessarily the film itself. 

You bring up a good point, that the film draws a distinction between the purebreds and the fabricants, and the changes to the actors’ appearances are used to support that. I had overlooked that point which, narratively, diegetically, makes sense. It is an important point - the racial, gender, and physical morphing not only play a thematic role (which I had acknowledged), but in this case the racial morphing (for the neo-Seoul part) specifically plays a direct narrative role.

But media can go beyond pure enjoyment, and there are many ways to read any text. No, the point of the film is not to exist as a discussion about race, but race is one thing that is clearly used thematically in the film, and so it is open season for discussion. There are many lenses through which one can perform critical analysis. I don’t think it’s a stretch for anyone to recognize that pieces of art don’t exist in a vacuum. This film didn’t spring forth from the camera fully formed and uninformed by culture and by history. It would be one thing if all people had been equally and fairly represented on film throughout time. But I, personally, was unable to see this film without thinking of the historical representation of people of color on film. 

There are reasons why blackface is taboo, good reasons, and I was only hoping to point out that when there are images of white people in yellowface throughout film history, I find it hard to understand why this practice is also not taboo.

Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan

Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu

Additionally, I hope you recognize that your experience of the film and how it made you feel is every bit as valid as my experience of the film. It doesn’t matter whether someone experiences something one time or fifty times, if something makes a person feel a certain way, you can’t say “no it didn’t”, or “I didn’t feel that way so there’s no reason that you should have”. You can, however, posit that there might be reasons why it should or shouldn’t have made me feel that way, which I am hoping is what you were trying to do. In this case, your point about the purebreds vs. the replicants is a excellent point, and strengthens the argument for the facial alterations used in the film. I accept that the alterations serve a narrative purpose, and that perhaps the narrative couldn’t have been served through any other means. But the way in which it was done still made me feel uncomfortable. I am glad that it did not make you feel uncomfortable. And I have no patience for the people who boycotted the film before it even came out, based on the images alone. But still - it made me feel uncomfortable, and I know that I am not the only one. 

It is OK to like things that are problematic. I loved Skyfall, despite the rapey scene and the exoticized love slave and the general holdover of misogyny. I think that Sean Penn is a great actor, despite his personal history of domestic abuse. Nothing and no one is perfect, so it’s important to at least acknowledge that something you love or something that someone you love does may be kinda fucked up. The yellowface used in this film is, on a whole, very positive, and not at all of the Mickey Rooney variety. But for me, its very use (and, I still think, it’s very poor execution) conjures those years and years of history.