Overdose of politically correct

Rating: 1/10 (19 February 2017)

Contrary to what some pretentious director may believe, one may understand a movie and still not like it. That is the case with Cloud Atlas, which mixes 6 average stories to prove that: the soul survives; soulmates do exist and white people are evil.
The 6 scrambled but linked plots are book-ended by the story taking place in a low-tech post-apocalyptic future. Cowardly Zachry, played by Tom Hanks, lives with a tribe that worships a deity called Sonmi-451 and is constantly menaced by savage Kona barbarians. Despite his fear, Hanks helps a member of a more advanced group, played by Halle Berry, to launch a signal for the evacuation of what is left of mankind to another planet.
This story contains the only unsolved mystery: how did Zachry's village even come to exist, considering the brutal, random Kona assaults. Also, as an added annoying bonus, Zachry has "visions" of the devil (played by poor Hugo Weaving, who is the villain in all the stories).
In a movie this long and complicated, "visions" are the last thing one needs.
The other story in chronological order are: in 1849 a lawyer sailing back home saves a stow away Afro-American, who strangely happens to live in a South Pacific island inhabited by Maoris. All the villains on board are white, so once back at home the lawyer decided to join the abolitionists. Also, the lawyer is married to a read-headed, freckled oriental woman (this is linked to the soulmate concept).
In 1936 the love story of a gay couple is destroyed by suicide. The link with the previous story is the diary written by the lawyer and read by one of the lovers.
In 1973, Berry plays a journalist who meets the remaining half of the gay couple and gets involved in a story that looks like blacksploitation with nothing to do with the rest of the movie, apart from proving that white people are bad.
In 2012, an elderly publisher gets locked up in a retirement home, but manages to escape. The evil nurse of the home is played by Weaver, who looks nothing like a woman - albeit a very masculine one. The link to the previous story is a house. This story tries to offer some comic relief, but it is not very funny.
In a dystopian future, in South Korea, a female clone named Sonmi-451 goes through the same plot line of The Matrix, albeit in a more condensed time-frame. Chosen by a revolutionary group for reasons impossible to understand, Sonmi-451 discovers that the world is not what it seems and that humans deserve to know the truth, only to get the group attacked by the authorities and herself in danger. She also falls for her saviour, played by Jim Sturgess (who's the lawyer married to the oriental redhead).
All characters in each segment are played by the same bunch of actors, which means Berry gets to play a Caucasian blonde, Jim Sturgess is badly disguised as "oriental" and Korean Doona Bae plays both Sonmi-451 and a weird- looking redhead.
In fact, the make-up is excessive to the point of distraction More than the idea of souls surviving and meeting again, one gets politically correct characters shoved down the throat - with the constant of Hugo Weaving, white male and incarnation of evil.