An Innovative Masterpiece Weaving Together Time and Space

Rating: 9/10 (30 November 2015)

Cloud Atlas: An Innovative Masterpiece Weaving Together Time and Space
An adaptation from David Mitchell's book, Cloud Atlas tells six asynchronous stories simultaneously, conveying a relation between different events, people, and objects over time, teaching individual worth and importance of action. It presents both stunning scenery and office space. It pulls the watcher in, engaging their minds as it grapples with core human struggles.
Cloud Atlas intricately weaves time frames together through juxtaposing related scenes and concepts. In the opening scene, the narrator begins by mentioning the devil. "I'll yawn you about the first time we met, eye to eye." Though we expect to hear his story, we cut to a lawyer strutting towards a doctor digging in the sand. We later discover that this 'doctor' poisons the lawyer slowly in his cross-sea voyage, attempting to steal his wealth. He is the original "Old Georgie," as he attempts the first murder. The doctor shouts out "Have you lost something?" and we expect the conversation to follow through, but instead, we cut to a woman speaking into a voice recorder, wondering why someone would be willing to kill over a report (which is later revealed crucial to a city's survival). And so the movie continues throughout its entirety, linking scene to scene, theme to theme, time to time. As we expect to see a door open, the scene seamlessly moves to another time, where another door, physical or metaphorical, will open.
One such moment struck me in its parallelism, through using match cuts. A sailor aims his gun at Autua, a stowaway ordered to loose the top mast. The lawyer can choose to stop the shot and save Autua's life. Fluidly, we cut to a future scene, as a flying ship fires laser pulses at a thin bridge, narrowly missing our protagonist. The parallelism connects the times, increasing our worry for Autua as the ship's firing foreshadows the sailor's firing. We see the sailor look up, take aim, and we cut back to the future, looking up at the narrow bridge, paralleling the narrow topmast. Our care for these characters, heightened by this connection, helps us see how inaction is not a neutral stance, a pervading theme of the film, explicitly stated in several time lines.
In each time frame, the film reused most of the key actors as they played new roles each time. This core of actors portray differing genders, sexes, alignments to good or evil, and levels of historical importance, thus emphasizing the fluidity of human nature. We see the importance of individual choice in Somni-451's prophesy. Though made to motivate those in her own time to fight against social injustice, it was later used in a post-apocalyptic world to motivate and inspire Zachry to complete his quest. In the 1930's, Robert Frobisher explicitly states that "All boundaries are waiting to be transcended," and Cloud Atlas does just that, merging past, present and future. The fluidity of these usually fixed attributes implicitly declares the thesis of our personal ability to change and the universal potential we have to change the world through seemingly unimportant actions.
The purpose of Cloud Atlas isn't to merely tell intriguing stories, linking them through parallel actions; it is to link common themes and eternal truths throughout the film. A central theme echoed throughout a call to fight and die for Truth and right, unfettered by social constructs and fears. In the earliest time and the future most time, the same actor gives the same quote. "The weak are meat the strong do eat." In other time periods, we see this fulfilled literally. The explicit statement, as it bookends the show chronologically speaking, seasons the entire timeline with its message. We begin to see those who buy in to this mentality in each of the distinct timelines, seeing those who take advantage of the physically weak to promote themselves.
We see this again near the end of the movie, when the protagonist turns on his slave-owning father, joining the abolitionists. The father admonishes, "There is a natural order to this world and those who try to upend it do not fare well. {At this point, we see an execution squad in the future.} This movement will never survive. If you join them, you and your entire family will be shunned. At best, you exist as pariah, to be spat on and beaten. At worst, lynched or crucified. {At this point, the executioner lowers the mode of execution onto the martyr's head and pulls the trigger.} {We return to the abolitionists perspective.} And for what? For what? No matter what you do, it will never amount to a single drop in a limitless ocean." Undeterred, the protagonist replies, "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?" The synthesis of audio from the past and visuals from the future bind together the two times. The newborn abolitionist, who may only be a drop in an ocean insofar as his effects on slavery go, parallels Somni-451, who we know to have caused not only a revolution, but also to have become a goddess figure, having brought about a post-apocalyptic world. This parallel shows us how a drop in the ocean really does have monumental effects on the universe.
Overlapping scenes, motifs, allusions, and themes throughout Cloud Atlas give the piece great power to convey its themes effectively. Its divergent nature cements in the minds of listeners its themes, of Truth, Love, Right, and the power of the individual. Due to the graphic nature of several scenes, I wouldn't show it to my children unedited, but the themes contained are definitely worth engaging. 10/10 if it cut a few unbecoming scenes not necessary to the plot.