Cloud Atlas
The film actually has six stories. These stories take place in different times and places. The first story is about Adam Ewing. Ewing has been sent by his father-in-law to make a deal because he is a lawyer. When he gets to the island he is infected by a worm and the Dr. Henry Goose gives him medicine to help him. While on the island he sees a slave being whipped. On his way home he finds the same slave hiding in his chamber. He eventually talks to the captain who lets the slave stay on board. We find out that the doctor has actually been killing Ewing for his money instead of saving him but the slave finds out and saves Ewing.
Robert Frobisher is a musician who runs away from home and finds work with a famous musician Vyvyan Ayrs. Frobisher composes ‘’The Cloud Atlas Sextet’’ but Ayrs wants to keep the piece for himself. Frobisher won’t give it to him and Ayrs threatens to ruin Frobisher’s reputation. Frobisher decides to run away anyway and shoots Ayrs before he leaves. Frobisher finishes his composition and commits suicide just as his lover, Sixsmith, comes to save him.
The next story is about Luisa Rey. She is a journalist who meets Sixsmith who is a nuclear physicist and older now. Sixsmith let’s Rey know that there is a fault in the new nuclear reactor. Sixsmith is assassinated before he can give her the report. Rey goes to the power plant and meets another scientist Isaac Sachs. He also decides to give her the report but is assassinated before he can as well. They also try to assassinate Rey but she survives. With the help of friends she gets hold of and publishes the report.
The plot is based on the same bodies meeting in different tiimes and places but all of the characters with the same birthmark represented the same soul. The director used L-cuts to cut from one character with the star birth mark to the another. By doing this the director shows that the same soul, even if it is a different time and body, carries the same personality traits, for example working to help humanity. When they are in the same bodies and meet each other they relive the same reactions and emotions even if they are in different places and times.
The film is actually filmed as a vantage point but because the story spreads through many times, places and characters it looks more like the third person view point.
The genres in the film are varied because the story is based in different times and places. These are historical, futuristic, science fiction, action, adventure and romance.
The narrator was the person who had the star birth mark even if that person is in a different time and place.
Yes, it does if we consider that each individual stories begins wth the setting of the story, a complication to the story, the conflict and climax of the complication and the resolution of that story. No, it isn’t because this film doesn’t try to just entertain the audience but to give them more and more messages and information through signs and objects within the film. I believe that this film should be watch once to evaluate the senario and another time to evalute the filming techniques; which is what ı did and recommend.
Harutyun Arto Davulciyan
