Introduction: You may have heard of
Cloud Atlas. It's
that trailer with a small cast of great actors filling several roles in 6 stories spanning centuries of human history. You may have definitely asked
yourself "What the hell does
Cloud Atlas mean?" Well instead of doing
nothing like you did I went to Wikipedia, the most reliable source on the
internet, and according to the writer
Cloud is supposed to represent
something changing and ever shifting while
Atlas is supposed to
represent something constant and eternal. It's about changing the
natural order of the world. It's about challenging parts of life that
bind us and breaking free of them like slavery, persecution,
prosecution, lies, and even institutions. Welcome to the cloud.
The Journal
A lawyer has just signed a slave labor contract for his
father-in-law and is on his way home when he finds a self-freed slave on
the ship. He is confronted with choosing the right thing or following
the law. He chooses to care for the stowaway and even though they come
from 2 completely different walks of life they become close friends. The
freed slave even saves the life of the lawyer from a greedy doctor who
has been poisoning him on the journey. When the lawyer arrives home he
embraces his wife, burns the contract in front of his father-in-law, and
writes a journal about his journey of self-discovery which is read
by...
The Letters
Robert, a young composer working with the world's
greatest composer, who is on the run from the police for being
homosexual during the 1930s. He starts composing his own masterpiece but
his mentor blackmails him into never leaving and Robert must make a
choice between leaving and destroying his career or stay and continue
working with him. He ends up shooting his mentor and goes into hiding
finishing his masterpiece. His story ends with him having enough. Enough
running for being who he is. So he shoots himself in the head. Gotta
regular Ernest Hemingway over here! The thing is this story is told
through letters that Robert has sent to his gay lover which are then
read by...
The Article
An aspiring journalist in the 70s who must live up to
the name of her legendary father. It all starts when she meets the gay
lover from the previous story, now an old man, who is working for a
nuclear power plant and wishes to give her information about a
conspiracy. When he is killed by a contract killer she digs deeper only
to be pushed off a bridge into the sea. After surviving that she gets
up, teams up with a security guard, and totally pwns that killer in a
really tense scene. Now that the truth has been revealed her neighbor,
Javier, turns the story into a book which is read by...
The Movie
Timothy Cavendish, a British editor in 2012 (Represent!)
who owes some gangsters a lot of money after their friend's book became a
best-seller. Let's rewind for a second though, you see, a writer didn't
like a criticism about his book and decided to THROW THE CRITIC OFF THE
ROOF OF A BUILDING. He went to jail for THROWING A MAN OFF A BUILDING
and because of the press his book became a hit. Anyways, Timothy goes to
a place to lay low but it is revealed that this place is a retirement home
for crazy old people. Classic. He befriends some other "prisoners" and
they break out Senior Citizen Style. Just imagine
The One Who Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest mixed with
Mrs. Doubtfire because
HUGO WEAVING IS A FEMALE NURSE. Timothy then writes about this adventure and it gets
turned into a famous Hollywood film that is seen by...
The Religion
An artificial human in the not so far future who has
spent her entire life as a food server with no rights whatsoever but a
growing curiosity of life. Then one day she finds that her owner has
overdosed and a revolutionary asking to take her away. She must choose
between staying and being killed for her curiosity or going with this
stranger and living another day. She goes with him. This choice in and
of itself shows her want to live and that she is more than a disposable
fabricant (the name of her kind). Her relationship to her savior is the
most interesting part of this movie as you watch her fall in love with
him as her humanity grows and becomes more complex. She is then
confronted with another choice; speaking out to the word or staying
silent. After learning the truth of what happens to fabricants when they
die (they get turned into food for fabricants) she decides to speak
out. This choice leads to not only the death of her lover but of her as
well, yet she is content knowing the truth has been revealed. Her words
to the world are remembered for years to come and are even turned into a
religion which is practiced by...
The Story
Barbarians in the distant future where our culture has
degenerated but we still have the left over technology from previous
generations. It is told from the perspective of a hallucinating shepherd
who is giving shelter to a traveling scientist. The story is a flip of
the slavery story as it is about light-skinned, superstitious barbarians
being visited by dark-skinned, high tech scientists looking for a new
land. Except the new land their looking for is a new planet. The Earth
is dying and the scientist is trying to reach a satellite on top of a
mountain near the barbaric tribe to trace a habitable planet. The
shepherd takes her there where he learns the truth about his religion,
but when they come back from the mountain they find the tribe completely
massacred by another tribe. So what happens next? The scientist pulls
out the coolest laser guy ever and f*cking pwns. She then takes the
shepherd and the remaining survivors and go to the new planet where the
shepherd, as an old man, tells his grandchildren a story that beings
with... (go back to The Journal)
Conclusion
Cloud Atlas is a film that hopes to transcend things such
as generations, gender, and even genre (The 3 Gens). You know what that
means? Yupp, men dressed as women. Right off the bat you know this
movie is ambitious as hell. Especially for an independent film. And you
know it has won the Oscar for best make-up (even though it can sometimes
get cartoony when you see a large nose on a serious Tom Hanks). I think
the thing I love most about
Cloud Atlas is the details. The devil is
supposedly hiding in them and really make this film a pleasure to watch
again and again as you notice things you didn't before. Like how the number 6 shows all over the place. That shows a
passion that made me love film in the first place.
