Cloud Atlas

Rating: 5/10 (28 February 2013)

I saw the trailer and a review for this film before its release, it sounded like a really interesting concept about history, time and human morality, and from the makers of The Matrix, the Wachowski siblings, Andy and Lana (formerly Larry(!)), I was looking forward to seeing if it really was worth it. Basically six interrelated and interwoven stories take the audience from the 19th century to the distant, post-apocalyptic future, going backwards and forwards in time, showing stories play out long enough to switch to another, and all have the same familiar faces in different historical guises. In 1849 in the South Pacific Ocean young American lawyer Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) from San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, is concluding business for his father-in-law Haskell Moore (Hugo Weaving) with Rev. Giles Horrox (Hugh Grant) in the Chatham Island. Ewing witnesses Moriori slave Autua (David Gyasi) who was a stowaway being whipped and he becomes a freeman from advocating, meanwhile Ewing is slowly being poisoned by Dr. Henry Goose (Tom Hanks) to steal valuables, but he is saved by Autua, and returning to America Ewing and his wife Tilda (Doona Bae) join the Slavery Abolishment Movement. In 1936 in Cambridge, England and Edinburgh, Scotland, bisexual twenty three year old English musician Robert Frobisher (Skyfall's Ben Whishaw) starts working for famous composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent) to help write his music, and doing inspires him to write his own masterpiece composition, we see in Ayr's house is the journal of Ewing. Frobisher starts writing his piece, "The Cloud Atlas Sextet", but Ayrs wants credit for creating the music, threatening to expose his scandalous background if he doesn't get it, but the young shoots him, he finishes the masterpiece and shoots himself before Rufus Sixsmith (James D'Arcy) his lover arrives. In 1973 in San Francisco, California, journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) meets an older Sixsmith by chance, he is now a nuclear physicist, he tips her off about the new nuclear reactor run by Lloyd Hooks (Grant) and a conspiracy about the safety, but before he can prove this report he is killed by Bill Smoke (Hugo Weaving), a hit-man who works for Hooks. She finds letters to Sixsmith from Forbisher, and she is passed a copy of the report by other power plant scientist Isaac Sachs (Hanks), but Smoke kills Sachs and tries to run her off a bridge to drown, but she survives and with the help of Joe Napier (Keith David), the head of security at the plant, and she exposes the plot for the benefit oil companies by creating an accident. In 2012 in the United Kingdom, sixty five year old publisher Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent) has to potential to make it big with the publication of a book by gangster Dermot Hoggins (Hanks), who was sent to jail for murdering a critic, but the gangster's associates threaten to kill him if they do not get a share of profits from the publication. Cavendish gets help from his brother Denholme (Grant), but he is tricked by him into going to a nursing home to hide, there he is treated poorly by unjustly cruel Nurse Noakes (Weaving), and held against his will, but he and other "inmate" patients plan to escape and succeed, and returning the publisher gets the life of Rey in a manuscript and also writes a screenplay based on his nursing home experience. In 2144 in Neo Seoul, Korea, genetically engineered clones are servants in a restaurant, one of them is fabricant Sonmi-451 (Bae) who faces execution and is interviewed before, and she recalls being released from the servitude by "Union" rebel movement member Commander Hae-Joo Chang (Jim Sturgess), she sees a movie based on Cavendish's adventure while in hiding. The Union rebels reveal that food for future fabricants is made up of killed fabricants that have been "recycled", and Sonmi-451 is taken to Hawaii to make a public broadcast and manifesto to take on society to end slavery and fabricant exploitation, and when a firefight breaks out Hae-Joo and the other Union members are killed, so she gets her time to end her broadcast before being captured, she is killed after telling her story. In the date called "106 winters after The Fall" (apparently the year 2321), in The Big Island, where a primitive society called "The Valley" still exist, following "The Fall" when most of humanity where killed, Zachry (Hanks) lives with his sister and young niece Catkin (Raevan Lee Hanan), and there Sonmi is worshipped by the tribes people as a goddess. Zachary lives with hallucinations of goblin-like figure Old Georgie (Weaving) who constantly manipulates him about his decisions, especially causing him to have unnecessary fear, and it leads to the murder by the cannibalistic Kona tribe killing his friend and friend's son, and the village gets visited by "Prescients" member Meronym (Halle Berry), they are a race who that keep remnants of technology from before the Fall. Zachary agrees, following Catkin's life from a stonefish sting, to guide Meronym to search for Cloud Atlas, a communications station, in the mountains, they will use it to send a message to the colonies of Earth, and there the Valley tribes discover the truth about Sonmi being a mortal, unlike the goddess they believe she was. Zachary is almost convinced by Old Georgie to kill Meronym for blasphemy, but he sees the video of Sonmi and changes his mind, and returning he finds that the Kona tribe have slaughtered his people, so he kills their Chief (Grant) and rescues Catkin, and before being attacked again Meronym rescues them, and they all travel together for a boat leaving the Big Island. In at least six roles between them the cast of established stars are in all time periods played out, I can't really comment on particular stars, they were all good, the special effects were fantastic, it was very long and very complicated, but good thrilling entertainment, a different kind of science-fiction fantasy. Worth watching!