The film version of David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas” can be described as an incomprehensible, yet amusing series of events. Starting from the 19th century to a distant future with advanced technology that’s surreal, the film follows six distinctive stories where all the main characters seem to have past and future lives. The film tells us that we are all connected by fate, karma, or whatever people believe in nowadays, yet during the course of nearly three hours did that sum up within each story.
The film loops the stories inside another, challenging the audience to spot the connection between each other. The cast each played a variety of roles, which was the original idea of the three directors of “Cloud Atlas.” Tom Hanks himself played a doctor, a tribal hero with a bad conscious, a scientist, a hotelkeeper, a hardcore novelist, and other roles that we may need to keep an eye out when watching the film since the makeup artists went to the beyond to cover each actor’s identity for their distinctive roles.
Mitchell’s story tells six unique stories in a variety of genres spread over 500 years, from 1850 to 2321. The first story of the film sets in South Pacific with Jim Sturgess playing an American lawyer who was then converted to the abolitionist cause after being saved by a runaway slave. The setting then shifts to Scotland in the 1930s, where a gay composer leaves his lover to fulfill his dream in working with a renown composer. This story is inspired by Eric Fenby’s memoir of working with Frederick Delius. The third strand is more of a comic relief, in 2012 where an impoverished publisher suddenly becomes wealthy by publishing a thug’s autobiography, but trouble arises when the thug’s brothers come after him. He’s given shelter in what he believes is a hotel, but then proves to be an asylum.
The fourth tale is more of a political thriller where Halle Berry plays an investigative reporter who exposes, after almost getting killed, the world-threatening activities of a powerful company in the 70s. The two last stories are based in the distant future. In the new city of NeoSeoul in 2146, a clone breaks the norm and becomes a fugitive in order to save her sisters from a devastating fate. The last story is set in a later post-apocalyptic future where Tom Hanks plays an old man who lives in a barbaric world with a cannibalistic tribe led by Hugh Grant’s character.
The film was enjoyable, even if it left most of the audience in a pool of puzzlement. The way the stories intertwined with each other adds to the uniqueness and surrealism of the film, but the cast makes it believable in a way that the distant future can be our distant future if technology keeps advancing the way it is. “Cloud Atlas” uses this big idea of karma and the belief of past lives, which is part of the ancient belief in life as a repetitive cycle told by many scientists. The directors did a grand job by putting this belief in perspective, and keeping an almost oceanic flow throughout the film where some of the audience may not even have noticed that it was almost three hours long.
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