Each of the six intertwined stories takes place in a different era and assumes the tropes of completely different genres. Actors play multiple roles across the film, switching ages, races, and even genders from tale to tale. Tracking those actors is somewhat key to understanding the connective plot, in which various souls are reincarnated or migrate over time — crossing the ages like clouds cross the skies. In the book, you could track the reincarnation by the bodies that shared a comet-shaped birthmark; in the film, the birthmark just signals our protagonists, and the actor triggers the reincarnation.
See Hugo Weaving? See Tom Hanks? Here is a guide to the karmic chameleons of Cloud Atlas. Cavendish's life is turned upside down as a result, with Hoggins' goons after his lucre and only a manuscript of Half-Life: The First Luisa Rey Mystery to keep his spirits from flagging. This is Jim Broadbent turning up again as a sci-fi busker on the streets of future Seoul. Trust it, it is. In a rare non-speaking part for an actual Oscar winner leaving aside The Artist obviously Halle Berry appears briefly as a Chatham Island native in the first story.
She witnesses the flogging of a David Gyas's Moriori, Autua, in a scene where we expect the camera to linger longest of the pained features of Adam Ewing. Set eyes to 'peeled'.
The role of Ayrs' beautiful, straying wife Jocasta is taken by Halle Berry. Yes, she's white. Yes, there are prosthetics involved. No, it won't turn out like Lenny Henry in True Identity. Berry, who'll be doing a lot of Cloud Atlas's heavy lifting, appears in the third story sans prosthetics as '70s reporter Luisa Rey.
She's given a tip off about a potentially deadly nuclear conspiracy that seems to be playing out like a repeat of Silkwood. The tipper-offer? Rufus Sixsmith In the absence of Peter Sellers, Halle Berry appears as an Indian partygoer at the book launch that ends so badly for Cavendish and a certain book critic. Hopefully, there'll be a small elephant and some pranks with loo role. Bust out of her replicant-y existence by the Sturge and his Union buddies, Sonmi is deliver to Halle Berry's cosmetic surgeon who removes her collar and rejiggles her facial features to avoid suspicion.
Unfortunately, as she later explains to the Archivist, the powers-that-be later rejiggle it back. There's a show trial, see, and she's the one they're showing. Zachry's wilderness companion, Halle Berry plays one of the few surviving Prescients, self-appointed guardians of what remains of civilisation.
Look out for a comet-shaped birthmark on her shoulder that recurs in other plot lines. The recipient of Robert Frobisher's letters from Bruges is a scientist and "musical oaf" who plays distant co-conspirator in his friend's and lover schemes. His ethics may be a little shady in this segment, but his dedication to science has a moral purity that sparks another narrative strand into thrilling life.
While Sixsmith is a significant but peripheral figure in Frobisher's story, his time comes in the Alan Pakula-style section which should be literally overflowing with assassins, shady villians, dodgy '70s 'taches, nasty execs and documents marked 'top secret', probably clasped in the sweaty mitts of said execs.
He's graduated from young scientist to something one with a secret in his troubled grasp. We'll find out when it's bed bath time. James D'Arcy fans set teeth to 'gnash' as the actor is shorn of his lovely locks as the archivist sent to interview fabricant Somni in 22nd century Korea.
It's an interrogation that, like the Voight-Kampff test in Blade Runner, is meant to preserve the thoughts of an artificial intelligence for future generations via an 'orison' device. David Frost, he ain't. Went out and didn't notice it was raining? Tough, because Hugh Grant is getting his beouf on as a Belgian hostelry's security man and you're not allowed back in to fetch a brolly. This means Grant can add 'tough guy' to a list of roles that also includes a missionary, a slippery CEO and a cannibal.
Hugh Grant will first appear as faux-Darwinist scumbag Horrox, a man who like to have an entire race subjugated before his first bowl of morning sauerkraut. There have many evils have been propagated in God's name through the years, but those teeth take some beating.
If Grant had been wearing them for Four Weddings And A Funeral, we're thinking there'd have been at least one wedding fewer. How dangerous is this company? Well, they're a greedy '70s corporation and they run a nuclear power plant. One day, a group of thugs associated with Hoggins arrive demanding his share. His accountant informs him that, after paying off all of Cavendish's debts, Cavendish only has two thousand dollars to his name.
Cavendish turns to his brother, Denholme Hugh Grant , for assistance. While visiting he sees Denholme's wife, Georgette Ben Wishaw , with whom he had once had an unfortunate affair. Denholme hears Cavendish out before giving him an address for a hotel known as the Aurora house where Cavendish will be able to hide from the thugs. Hugh Grant also pops up as the manager of Papa Song, the restaurant where Sonmi works. With its future-kitsch interior and the nefarious Nea So Corpos corporation dishing up the grub, it's a pretty far cry from your local bibimbap joint.
Look closely at this picture. The Aussie has played plenty of straight-up villains The Matrix, Captain America and shadowy characters V For Vendetta , and Cloud Atlas gives him the chance to cover the entire spectrum in one go. While Adam Ewing's pa-in-law is not the most vile on show, he's hardly a laugh-riot either. That's him in the trailer muttering darkly about upending "the natural order of this world".
That's presumably the same natural order that allows him to get away with those sideburns. On the flipside, perhaps there is no relationship between the scenes: it might be that I am sharing the themes as I have constructed them in my mind. I will not know, until I see the film again. Now, beyond this point, the film's ultimate binding force, binding together the entire galaxy, is true love.
But, anyone who knows the Wachowski films, already knows this point. The whole "Matrix" trilogy leads us to this point. As is true in the "Matrix" films, the true love this film seeks is unbound by any constraints.
Here, lust also becomes a constraint against love. This movie, however, takes love further. In some of the threads, that true love is a deep love between two equals. In some of the threads, it is the love of a parent and child. In some of the threads, it is the love of the rescued for a rescuer. In some of the threads, that love is loyalty to fellows or humanity.
But, the love of " Cloud Atlas " is not merely something rational, antiseptic and platonic. Rather, it is compulsive. Again, it is a love that someone cannot, not have. In Rumi's language, it is fire that ignites life. It is not mere wind; it is fire. And, anyone who does not have this fire, need not be alive. That love is something that reaches into the most intimate places of your being, and cannot exist without connecting with someone else.
That love becomes something produced by the two of you, yet not belonging to either of you. It is a greater work of art than even a masterpiece composition. So, the film is ultimately asking if you have ever experienced that true boundless love. I do not think that I knew love until the births of my daughters. Until they arrived, I was essentially an ascetic of sorts, detached from the world. And, they arrived and became my world.
And, through them, I was exposed to love in all directions. I think every parent understands this. And, when I follow the story of the two Wachowskis, I find myself thinking that I am witnessing a special, true love between two siblings. In another time and place, a related pair would have split.
I wonder, though, how many of us find that fire of love in another person, where physical union becomes a taste in that transcendence. And, what do we make of that corporate presence in the background. At first, we watch slavemasters profiting off of humans. Then, in the next thread, we observe members of that high society, discarding their sense of dignity. Then, in the next thread, we observe a business that is capitalizing off of nuclear disaster, followed by a culture, again of high society discarding the dignity of its elders.
Then, in the final two threads, we witness the final conquest of the corporate monopoly, eventually vanquished by the cult of a martyr. And, society starts all over again, ignited into place by her love for humanity, and, the last couple's love for each other. Now, critics of this film will consider it to be rather pretentious. Such would also be the complaint against the Wachowski's Matrix trilogy. But, in those films and in this film, I remained absorbed and entertained.
And, in this film, I was touched down to the depths of my being. I found myself wondering wondering wondering, if that true love really does exist between two lovers, with such depth as the burning intensity of my love for my daughters.
Omer M. Far Flungers Six keys to "Cloud Atlas". Mozaffar October 27,
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