Cloud Atlas
A movie that is six movies at the same time. A visionary and quite ambitious project that transcends the ages and even the stars in order to be told. All that and much more is what you get while watching this groundbreaking 2012 film.
It is six movies because it is told in the form of six different stories told throughout six different moments in history, past, present and future. The stories overlap so the audience can understand how the six stories are related. One action in the past has its consequences in the present which in turn affects the future and none of the stories can not really be understood unless you put them together. The message it seems to me is the past is still happening in our present since its consequences are here with us and the future is now not tomorrow because it is our actions what build the future.
This is not a Hollywood production, is in fact a German production and in many ways looks like a personal effort though really many people were involved. The actors are just wonderful and the cast includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and the mesmerizing Hugo Weaving. They all participate in all the sequences or in most of them. A special high note of this production is the work of the makeup artists which is outstanding; for example, I had trouble identifying Hugo Weaving as a tough-as-nails and cruel blond nurse.
The visual effects and the music perfectly complement each other. The plot might be the weak `point of the production because it really is hard work to tell a multi part story like this one. In special and in spite of the many vicissitudes the characters had to go through, the suffering and the unfairness, I like this optimistic tone felt at the end (the prologue and the epilogue are one and the same and thus an extra story), one that predicts a brighter future for mankind.
BTW, the reason why the film is called Cloud Atlas is revealed in the sequence before the epilogue. Also the term Cloud Atlas is used in Meteorology and refers to the study of how clouds form, how they interact and how that interaction results in atmosphere changes.
It is six movies because it is told in the form of six different stories told throughout six different moments in history, past, present and future. The stories overlap so the audience can understand how the six stories are related. One action in the past has its consequences in the present which in turn affects the future and none of the stories can not really be understood unless you put them together. The message it seems to me is the past is still happening in our present since its consequences are here with us and the future is now not tomorrow because it is our actions what build the future.
This is not a Hollywood production, is in fact a German production and in many ways looks like a personal effort though really many people were involved. The actors are just wonderful and the cast includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and the mesmerizing Hugo Weaving. They all participate in all the sequences or in most of them. A special high note of this production is the work of the makeup artists which is outstanding; for example, I had trouble identifying Hugo Weaving as a tough-as-nails and cruel blond nurse.
The visual effects and the music perfectly complement each other. The plot might be the weak `point of the production because it really is hard work to tell a multi part story like this one. In special and in spite of the many vicissitudes the characters had to go through, the suffering and the unfairness, I like this optimistic tone felt at the end (the prologue and the epilogue are one and the same and thus an extra story), one that predicts a brighter future for mankind.
BTW, the reason why the film is called Cloud Atlas is revealed in the sequence before the epilogue. Also the term Cloud Atlas is used in Meteorology and refers to the study of how clouds form, how they interact and how that interaction results in atmosphere changes.
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