Our lives are not our own, we are bound to others, past and present.

Rating: Null/10 (23 June 2013)

I almost watched this movie twice, on DVD. And yes, it really helps to turn on the "subtitles" for many scenes, otherwise it is virtually impossible to make out what they are saying. I had watched the first 90 minutes then put it away for a week, started at the beginning and just watched it all the way through.
The great and late critic Roger Ebert saw "Cloud Atlas" more than once, and this paragraph from his review sums it up very well for many of us:
(Ebert) (quote)I was never, ever bored by "Cloud Atlas." On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in "Cloud Atlas" take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it "means," is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.(unquote)
I had read that before I watched the movie, and that is pretty much the approach I took. It is long, but I was never bored, always anxious to see what would come next. One of the stories had an old composer and his young assistant working on the "Cloud Atlas Sextet", said to be a beautiful piece of music that some characters in other time periods seemed to be familiar with. Also the appearance in various time periods of a very distinctive birth mark. Perhaps it is all part of what one character says, "Our lives are not our own, from womb to tomb we are bound to others, past and present."
As the credits roll, each actor is shown as each of the 4, 5, or 6 different characters they play in the movie. The makeup and costuming are so good that in many cases I had no idea. Some of the male actors even played female roles, and some of the female actors played male roles.
All in all a very nice movie experience. DVD from my public library.