This is one of those fascinatingly debates that is so complicated, I’m going to count myself among the undecided voters, especially since I haven’t seen Cloud Atlas yet. If you simply showed me stills of Caucasian actors Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess and James D’Arcy playing Asian characters, yes, I immediately side with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. The group issued a statement condemning the film for A) not casting Asians in those roles, and B) simply slanting the eyes of said actors and thinking that counts as making them look Asian. That’s some messed up Andy Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffanys ish. What’s more, directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer were sensitive enough not to put any actors in blackface in the movie but seemed to think it was OK to do yellowface. Insensitive, racist, enough said.

Except, there are a few details making this more of a conversation than a round of name-calling. There is a narrative reason the three directors say they chose to cast Sturgess, Weaving and D’Arcy for those parts, in a storyline that takes place in the year 2144: They are the reincarnated souls of characters that were white in their previous lives. OK, so that’s kind of interesting. Except, as Crushable pointed out today, plenty of stories (like the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There) have successfully used multiple actors to portray the same person or soul, so you could expect the audience to make a leap with you. Read more…