An interesting way of looking at the nature of freedom.

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2013)

Initially I wasn't going to see this film because a reviewer completely trashed it, and also when I read a synopsis it suggested that the only this that was connecting the six separate stories was simply that the guy at the end was telling all of the stories to his children, but after watching it on a plane from Hong Kong to Europe (and pretty much sleeping through most of it because I was just so incredibly tired) I decided that I would give it another go, and fortunately that opportunity arose on the way back to Australia.
I would not necessarily call this movie a great movie and in a way I would probably prefer to read the book (and it is on a list of books that must be read so I guess I will keep my eyes out for it). Anyhow, as we probably all know, this movie is actually six different stories that are somehow all connected. There is the physical connection, in that the first story (at least in the book) is the journal of a man who is coming to understand the evils of slavery as he sits on a boat in the South Pacific. This journal is then picked up by a young man in the 1930s who is a struggling composer being blackmailed because of his homosexuality. He tells his story through a series of letters that is read by a investigative journalist in the 1980s who is investigating a murder relating to the commissioning of a nuclear powerplant. However there is a second link with this composer as he writes a masterpiece called Cloud Atlas, however because of his situation, it literally sits gathering dust for years until uncovered at a later stage.
All of the stories are connected in this way, though a flaw that I found in the movie was that the forth segment, about an old man attempting to escape from an old folks home, does not seem to have a connection with the previous segment, though it is connected to the fifth segment (a near future action story) through a film that they watch, and the fifth segment is connected to the sixth segment (a post apocalyptic adventure) by a recording that is located in a communications station, once again called Cloud Atlas.
However, there is another theme that seems to run through these segments and that is the idea of slavery. The first and the fifth are the most obvious links, with the fifth dealing with a race of clones who are created to simply serve humanity and have no rights whatsoever, and a failed rebellion that arises because of it. It is interesting when that is looked back on there is a suggestion that her impact upon the future was minute indeed, and in fact when we look back from this period the impact of many of those in the past are very few. Yet, the homosexual composer who ends up killing himself in a bathtub (a noble way to go he suggests) has the biggest impact of all, as not only does his composition become very popular (as the record store owner says, I found this and started playing it, and I simply cannot stop listening to it) he also indirectly brings down a conspiracy that is set up by the coal industry to discredit the nuclear industry, as well as causing mass destruction along the way.
The other thing that I liked about this film was how they would jump between the segments, and the way that they did it was quite impressive, and in some cases very seamless. Sometimes the segments would be long, other times they would be short. Sometimes it would simply be like moving to other scene, but at other times the jumps would be related, such as periods of intense passion. However, as said, this movie is good, but it is not fantastic, but it does actually make me want to read the book to see how things are done there (I do have an idea though).