Oh, the various ups and downs I’ve experienced during the making of Cloud Atlas.

Up: they’re adapting one of my favourite novels!

Down: Oh shit, the Wachowskis are involved. I still haven’t forgiven them for The Matrix Reloaded and V For Vendetta.

Up: Tom Twyker is also involved. Brilliant! Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was one of the great unsung films of the last decade and it vastly improved upon the source material.

Up even further: A five minute trailer is released and it’s amazing. The music, visuals and the feeling behind it are perfect. This could be a really special film.

Down: I actually go and see the film.

Looks like my Wachowski-related fears were well-founded. A subtle, playful, philosophical book is turned into a gimmicky hodgepodge with too much action. There’s a lot to admire in the movie but there’s also a lot that is wrong.

Structurally, the film is a horrible, horrible mess. In the novel, you have six stories. One begins and then halfway through, it’s interrupted. And so on and so forth until you get to the final story, which is allowed to play out in its entirety. The remaining stories are then wrapped up until we end back up where we started.

The decision here, and it’s not an unreasonable one, is to cut back and forth between the different tales. But the editing is terrible. Sometimes you get long stretches where you never rest for more than sixty seconds on any one story. This restlessness harms the movie immeasurably and ensures that you’re never particularly invested in any of the characters. It kind of reminds me of the end of The Return of the Jedi where you have three battles going on at the same time and then also The Phantom Menace where you have four - there’s just too much cutting.

Part of me wishes that this was made as a BBC mini-series, with each episode focused exclusively on each yarn (and structured like the novel). It would allow each story to breath and help the larger meaning to come slowly into focus. I feel that someone like Krzysztof Kieślowski would have been perfect for this.

Instead we have to make do with the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker, who realise that the masses are an impatient lot and need to eat all of their cake at once. And so all the stories play out simultaneously.

At the beginning of the movie I was hopeful that this strategy would succeed. Once we get past the credits, each story is slowly introduced. Wonderful. This isn’t going to be the hyperactive mess it could be. [half an hour later] Oh fuck, they’re going crazy with the editing.

One glaring instance where the editing hurts the movie is during the Luisa Rey story. She’s a reporter who kicks a hornet’s nest at a nuclear power facility and her life ends up in jeopardy. Indeed, at one point, she’s even run off the road by the killer Bill Smoke.. In the book this works perfectly. You’ve spent time getting to know the character, you like her, you’re rooting for her and then she’s rammed off the road to her presumed death. You then have to wait a couple of hundred pages to find out what happened to her. It’s a great cliffhanger.

But in the film, the attempt on Rey’s life is intercut with other stories and the power and surprise of the moment is lost. And also, because the stories are all intercut, we immediately find out what happened to her.

The film also does a poor job of conveying the short, intense relationship between Rey and Dr Sachs (played by Tom Hanks in the movie). He meets her once, for about a minute, and next thing we know he’s on a plane, confessing his love for her before he’s assassinated. We don’t feel any of the passion between the two characters and the impact of his murder is lost. (The trailer does a far better job of conveying the emotions.)

I was also disappointed with how gimmicky the make-up looked (the actors play multiple characters). I can kind of understand the point of it. The filmmakers want to show how interconnected we all are and how we as people are tied to those who came before us and those who will live after we die. I also guess it was done for practical reasons. The film cost a massive $100m and it would have required many more actors to fill the roles had they not struck upon the idea of having a repertory (a couple more big name could have easily added a few more million to the budget). But some of the make-up looks terrible. Hugo Weaving as a woman works in a ghoulish kind of way (and suits the comic nature of the Timothy Cavendish story), and Tom Hanks as an Irish thug is surprisingly enjoyable, but Doona Bae as a white woman looks weird in the extreme, as does her as an hispanic lady. Susan Sarandon’s stunt nose in the first story is also glaringly horrible - there was absolutely no need for it and it only served to take me out of the movie.

My wife was also annoyed with the actors playing multiple roles for the broader philosophical implications. Do the characters played by each actor represent a reincarnated soul? And if so, why do some of the characters the actors play differ so wildly? Hugo Weaving seems to play nothing but pricks while Tom Hanks is all over the map (psycho, thief, lovestruck scientist, psycho, actor, hero). Personally, that aspect didn’t really bother me. I didn’t see each character played by each actor as a reincarnated soul - I just saw it as a technique; a visual way of illustrating that all of the stories (and the grander human story) are linked.

But it is a little annoying that the filmmakers decided to make more out of this element. In the novel it’s very subtle - the only suggestion is that each of the main characters has a birthmark in the shape of a comet. How does this link these people? After all, each one is connected in action - each one commits an act of rebellion or rails against an oppressive system. But does it mean that they’re the same spirit? It’s up to you.

But the movie is a lot more overt in this theme. But at the same time, it also serves to make things more confusing.

To offer a positive for the movie, I loved the story about Robert Frobisher. Rather bizarrely, the action is moved from Belgium in the novel to Edinburgh in the film (to tenuously link the story to the Timothy Cavendish one - in the movie they take part in the same building), but it’s the only tale that packs an emotional punch. The best scene in the film by a country mile is the one where the doomed composer hides from his lover while atop a spire in Cambridge. The sun is setting and Frobisher is ruined - he refuses to let his lover see him this way but spies on him for as long as he can. It’s one of the best scenes I’ve seen in a film for ages and Frobisher’s final suicide is just as powerful.

I also really enjoyed the Timothy Cavendish story. Here we get a few well-needed laughs. The highlight being the ‘injury by pussy’ scene. And although it felt a little rushed, the Luisa Rey story was also enjoyable. The murder of Sixsmith, in particular, was as strong, surprising and brutal as I hoped it would be. I just wish it would have packed more of an emotional wallop. In the book you really get the feeling of love that existed between Sixsmith and Frobisher and it has a poignancy that Sixsmith is reading these letters right before he’s killed. The movie manages to get the brutality across but misses out on the sadness.

A massive, major success for the film is the movie’s main musical theme. Having heard it in the trailer, it was somewhat annoying that it only appeared about two thirds of the way through the movie but it was amazing how significantly the film improved whenever it was used. It may be the best theme I’ve heard in a movie this decade.

It certainly ensures that the film ends on a high. Adam Ewing’s assertion that an ocean is a multitude of drops and that therefore each person has an importance and significance in the world, wouldn’t resonate as strongly without this musical theme playing.

But such moments only make the sense of disappointment harder to swallow. The Somni story, for instance, is a travesty - it’s turned into a Star Wars-esque action spectacle. And Tom Hanks as Henry Goose, trying to poison Adam Ewing, is unsubtle in the extreme. When I read the book, Goose’s malice wasn’t apparent to me at all but here it’s signposted from the beginning. And Hanks really needs to be pelted with several large hams for his acting at the end of this story.

I also found, on film, that the Sloosha’s Crossin’ story was almost completely incomprehensible. I found it really hard going in places. And the depiction of ‘Old Georgie’ was heavy-handed in the extreme.

I guess this kind of means that I give a thumbs up to the stories directed by Tom Twyker and a thumbs down to the ones directed by the Wachowskis. A couple of years ago this would have validated my smug belief that the Wachowskis are talentless hacks but they won me over with their passion for Mitchell’s book - there’s a YouTube video where they display an infectious enthusiasm for the novel. Therefore it brings me nothing but sadness to say that they failed the book - their segments are easily the weakest. I only wish now that Twyker would have got to make the whole thing.

I'm not quite sure why Bitter Moon is so poorly regarded. For me it's one of Polanski's best – certainly not as good as Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, but far better than The Pianist, Knife in the Water and The Tenant.

Maybe it gets swept under the carpet because of the lurid sexual content. Or then again it could be the melodrama that puts people off. Or it could even be the fact that it features Hugh Grant. But for me all those things work wonderfully for the film – the sex gives it an honesty (there's no pussyfooting about in this film), the melodrama shows the absurdity of relationships and Hugh Grant… Well, Hugh Grant just makes the film funny, albeit not always intentionally. (He's much funnier here in a 'straight' role than he ever was in the risible Four Weddings and a Funeral.)

But even though I personally love the film, I guess it's quite easy to get the wrong end of the stick. After all, the film begins with a ridiculously stiff middle class English couple on a cruise liner (Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas). You can't help but wonder if it's a joke – they seem to have wandered in from a Merchant/Ivory production. And then you have Oscar (Peter Coyote), a disabled gargoyle of man who proceeds to tell Nigel (Grant) the story of his doomed romance with Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner). At the start it's all sweetness and light, with bad clichés thrown at you from all directions. And it's at this point that you either get Bitter Moon or you don't. If you take the film completely seriously you'll probably think it awful, but if you realise that Polanski, with the English couple (Grant wears a blazer and slacks for fuck's sake) and the sickeningly cute courtship, is having fun, then you just might have a grand old time yourself.

Just to further illustrate how obvious it is that Polanksi's having a laugh, take the first flashback. We get a slow pan from the camera, a fade and then some hilariously unsubtle 'French' music begins playing. Polanski's tongue is rooted firmly in his cheek. And then in his narration Oscar spouts bad cliché after bad cliché. But rather than annoy, this works superbly for the character – Oscar wants to be a writer; however it's painfully obvious why he's never been published. A sample of his voiceover: "Nothing ever surpassed the rapture of that first awakening. I might have been Adam with the taste of apple fresh in my mouth. I was looking at all the beauty in the world embodied in a single female form and I knew, with sudden blinding certainty, this was it!" And then after that we get a scene where Oscar rubs Mimi's feet on a park bench and another where Oscar tells Mimi he loves her as they fly in circles on a fairground ride. This seems to be your standard Hollywood romance on steroids pumped full of saccharine.

But just when you're getting nauseous, Polanski throws in a comic sex scene. Here, in the scene in question, we see Oscar and Mimi sitting at the breakfast table. At first they just look at one another, but then Mimi dribbles milk all over her breasts. And then after Oscar's licked it off, she administers a blow job. And to cap the scene, the toast pops up out of the toaster as Oscar comes. Now how can anyone not enjoy a film with a scene like that in it?

But although the breakfast scene is amusing, it also marks the point where the film begins to darken. With the initial thrill gone, Oscar and Mimi have to resort to sex toys and sex games to get their kicks. And although that works for a while, Oscar soon tires of Mimi – she bores him.

The scenes that deal with the breakdown of the relationship are probably the best. They capture the way relationships can imprison people and the way people can quickly tire of one another. And after Oscar's initial infatuation it's quietly shocking to witness how unfeeling he is towards Mimi – he barely reacts when she gets on her knees and begs him not to leave her. He really doesn't care anymore.

But just when you think this is bad, the film takes things even further. To try and get rid of Mimi, Oscar resolves to make her life a living hell. He treats her badly, embarrasses her at a party, and worst of all, abandons her just as they're about to go on holiday. But what makes it shocking is that it's actually kind of funny. I'm sure most people have had someone they want to get rid of but can't. Therefore it's actually kind of fun to live vicariously through Oscar. As he says himself, everyone has a cruel streak.

And it's fun watching Nigel's reactions to these stories. He tries to pretend that he's listening out of politeness, but despite his protestations, he loves every moment. He's a consummate voyeur. And it was a twisted stroke of genius to have Grant play the part. He's a poor actor, but there's a lot of fun to be had in his reactions – his response to Oscar's golden shower story had me howling, as did his reaction to Oscar talking about sucking on Mimi's clitoris ("Steady on, old boy"). Oh, and Grant's dancing in the party scene at the end has to be seen to be believed.

But as amusing as the film is, there is a serious core to it. It accurately captures the selfishness and cruelty that is present in many relationships (although, of course, the film takes it to an absolute extreme). And plus, in certain sections, it's actually quite sad. There's a wonderful little scene where Oscar and Mimi ride a fairground wheel together. The music is beautiful, the photography is dazzling and Mimi tells Oscar how happy she is. It's simple moments like this that make relationships worthwhile. Sure sex is of vital importance, but it's the togetherness that generates lasting happiness. And you feel that Oscar has lost sight of this. His pleasures seem rooted entirely in the physical aspect of their relationship. And it's telling that it's after this brief moment of contentment that Oscar dumps Mimi. She no longer has anything to offer him - he's taken all that he can from her (well, or so you think).

And when you think about it, it's quite startling how Oscar debases Mimi. Here's a woman who just wants to be loved and he uses that love to further his own strange appetite. And he abuses her so much that, in the end, she becomes exactly like him - they're mirror images. So maybe it's a belated act of compassion that Oscar shoots her and himself.

But of all the things I love in the film, it's the New Year's Party scene that I love the most. The moment where Fiona (Scott Thomas) and Mimi dance to 'Slave to Love' (got to love a bit of the Ferryman) is one of those wonderful bits of cinema that takes you completely by surprise. When I first saw the film I was as shocked as Nigel. But the scene has a strange kind of beauty to it. And I don't say that because it features two attractive women kissing. No, you kind of feel that Nigel deserves this. He hasn't cheated on Fiona by the strictest definition of the word, but he wants to. And so the dance and the kiss is both revenge and a kind of wake-up call. You feel that, much like Oscar, Nigel is losing himself. And so perhaps by being crushed under Fiona and Mimi's high heels he realises what sort of emotional devastation he was trying to inflict upon his wife.

But you could also argue that Oscar's murder-suicide is a bizarre act of compassion for Nigel and Fiona, as well. Having lead them so far along his dark, twisted path, he's maybe unconsciously telling them to wake up, that the answers for the problems in their relationship lie within, that you shouldn't look for answers in other people.