Enjoyable, but requires effort

Rating: 8/10 (27 February 2013)

I'll try to keep my synopsis simple. There are six stories, each taking place in a different era:
1. A trader in the 1800s becomes ill on a voyage home;
2. A young homosexual in the 1930s becomes amanuensis for an elderly composer;
3. A journalist in the 1970s investigates shady goings on involving a nuclear energy company;
4. A writer/literary agent in the present day encounters the results of financial imprudence;
5. A genetically engineered waitress in 2144 is liberated from servitude, but there are consequences;
6. A goatherd in a feudal-type village After The Fall is called on to help a visitor from a technologically advanced area.
Each of these stories has one or more links to others: sometimes the link is an artefact of some sort, sometimes it is a family connection, sometimes it is thematic. As if to reinforce this, the same actors play the principal characters in each story.
The stories are not told sequentially (ie. one after the other). They are told chronologically, however, and the cross cutting between them makes for some interesting choices: sometimes the cut is simply to maintain suspense, but sometimes it is to point up plot similarities, or thematic, or visual, or bridged by sound. I was very impressed with the editing; it was easy to follow the narrative of all six stories, and each of them had plenty of drama and interest (my favourites were the two in the future, though there was moderate audience laughter at the present day story).
I have mixed feelings about the actors playing multiple parts. I can see why this choice was made (and the make up is superb throughout), but sometimes it is distracting trying to figure out who is playing what.
I was very taken with Doona Bae, playing genetically engineered Sonmi - she conveyed enormous emotions in a performance which required her to appear almost totally unemotional.
This film is going to require repeated viewing to get the most out of it, but that's fine: three hours zipped by before I knew it.