MovieChat Forums > Cloud Atlas (2012) Discussion > What's the point of this movie?

What's the point of this movie?

posted 9 years ago by dreaming-stranger
56 replies | jump to latest

At about 2hours 30min I understood that the stories weren't meant to connect in the end. So was it just a 3 hour movie full of lots of intercut short stories that were supposed to make the point of the movie even stronger? In that case, wouldn't it have been more impactful through fewer stories? Quality versus quantity and all that.

The film engaged me because it's original but I can't work out what gives it worth aside from originality. Why is it considered to be such a "great" film. It's a masterpiece of creativity but... what's the point? Just that reincarnation is something the director thinks is a possibility? ... I feel like that's a pretty lame point to communicate through such a long and detailed film.

It was also just really depressing. The guy I cared most about kills himself for no apparent reason. The girl I cared most about is slaughtered like a pig after delivering some kind of speech that's meant to be a philosophical epiphany about existence and instead is just an "epiphanot" – weak and pseudo intellectual. The badass who rescues her is instantly killed in the most pitiful rebellion scene I have ever seen. The "Union" is never explained. The "Fall" is never explained. Sonmi's goddess status is never explained (unless it all somehow came from her epiphanot speech). Quite honestly I didn't care a fig for any of the other characters though at times they added a little bit of comic relief.

I'd love to be convinced of how amazing this film is so that I don't remember watching it with regret. Thanks guys.

[–] Farshnoshket 9 years ago

I'm going to give this an attempt, but keep in mind, answering this question is almost as monumental as the film itself. You see, the scope of this film is quite massive, but essentially the film attempts to demonstrate that the past does impact the present and therefore the present will impact the future. The decisions we all make impact future decisions. If we do not press ahead, those ahead of us will suffer.

The films tries to demonstrate this theme in many ways. The attorney who sees the error of his ways with the slaves, but that only happens because a slave braves an impossible journey and in doing so finds a friend. Frobisher is the author of our sextet, six stories, who understands that we can connect over and over again as time passes, and translate those feelings in song. Luisa Rey takes on ultimate danger, just as her father did, to uncover the wrong doings of an oil company. Our somewhat reluctant hero, Mr. Cavendish, overcomes and becomes the hero of his own and others retirements. Once Sonmi understands the truth she becomes a hero for generations; someone born as a clone rose to greatness. And Zachary, also quite reluctant, in the end does the right thing and finally finds his love, which for generations alluded him. If you follows Tom Hanks arc through the ages it's quite interesting. When he is killed in the airplane explosion he comes back as an angry thug, Dermot Huggins, which may give thought about how someone dies may impact someone if reincarnation does exist?

Examining all the stories and the order they are told more closely, we can see many more connections creatively interwoven. First, there are the written words in each story: the attorney in the first story writes of his tale, which Frobisher gets his hands on, or at least the first half, Luisa Rey hears the Cloud Atlas Sextet, young Javier, Luisa's friend writes of Luisa's story and Cavendish reads it, Cavendish writes a story which becomes a film of which Sonmi watches, and Zachary reads of Sonmi, someone he considers a goddess. Looking beyond that there are many other connections the writers make, here are just a few off the top of my head:

Nurse Noakes gets hit over the hit with a keg in the pub and dies. Played by Hugo. Next Scene: Bill Smoke gets hit over the head with a lead pipe and dies. Played by Hugo.

Zachary sees in the far distance his village being burned, black smoke rising. Next scene: Sonmi sees in the far distance a factory with black smoke rising. In both cases people being killed, for food.

Luisa Rey leaves party and says to rocker 'All I could think about for the past hour was throwing you off the balcony. Next scene: girl at party sees critic get thrown off balcony. Both the rocker and critic are played by the same actor.

There are many times when the words in one scene translate straight into the next scene, which of course is a different time period.

The reference of eating soap happens in 2 stories, Sonmi's and Cavendish's.

The comets, of course.

The blue gems seen throughout the film, on the attorney's vest, etc and of course at the end when we see the blue planet in the sky; earth.

There are many more bonds and/or connections made between scenes, which all help to fortify the films theme and connect all the stories into one.

Maybe next time you watch the film listen and watch carefully and you will see many, many more examples how it all connects and why each scene follows another. If someone felt the film was put together haphazardly they just weren't paying close enough attention.

Being a Mathematician I find the connections is what makes this film a masterpiece. Anyone can make a film to discuss reincarnation and have a few stories that touch on each other, but again, the precise way this film was sewn together makes it in a class by itself. Some might not be able to fully appreciate such precision, but I sure did.

You might want to look at each actor and all their parts and see how they progress or digress. Halle Berry's first character is a slave and she ends up as Meronym, whereas Hugo starts off as Haskell Moore, but by the end he just becomes some apparition that goes up in smoke. Karma is a bitch.

There really is so much more to discuss.

The more you examine Cloud Atlas the more you will find.

[–] stevielanding 9 years ago

The past impacts the future? Golly. Who knew?

Mairzy doats and dozy doats, but liddle lamzi nothing.

[–] smilesooner 9 years ago

You make some good points. There is an incredible amount to discuss in the movie as lives and circumstances weave in and out.

To paraphrase what Mark Twain may have said - history doesn't always repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And the movie riffs on synchronicities that would do Carl Jung proud. Somni/Fahrenheit 451?

If we are immortal souls working on the evolution of our consciousness over innumerable lives, then one would expect lives of apparent devolution as Tom Hanks underwent. And some souls may end up reliving a bad ending because they still haven't grasped the lesson yet. Some souls, for whatever reason, remain pretty mean and nasty over the course of the movie and 500 years. Who knows how long Mother Theresa took to become a pretty decent sort? She certainly evolved to a pretty high level, but perhaps she was pillaging like the rest of us a thousand years ago.

And in the grand scheme of things, six lifetimes may be just a blip. A short chapter in a very, very long book. Some souls are going to progress faster, and with fewer missteps than others.

Cloud Atlas is a movie worthy of lots of late night discussions over wine or other mind altering social and tongue lubricants.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] smfilm 9 years ago

At about 2hours 30min I understood that the stories weren't meant to connect in the end.

you totally didn't get the story

all the stories are directly connected, all the characters were re-incarnated to new lives and made their futures with their acts... also each line was connected one way or another... the 1800s ship voyage was written about and a character read the book in the 1930s then a character survived to old age and connected with another story in the 1970s

the book has much more detail, but NO it wasn't simply a bunch of short stories, it was a sophisticated, interconnected single story of how we evolve over time for those that believe in reincarnation etc.

[–] mattfoley_motivational_s 9 years ago

After watching through 2 hours and 42 minutes of this crap, I shoved the DVD back into the self-addressed, pre-paid Netflix envelope and cursed the day I put it in my queue. Truly a waste of time. The Directors tried to hide its' obvious flaws by cramming as many short, somewhat interconnected stories into it as possible.

And yeah, I get it. I caught all its' undertones and messages. It just bored me. I didn't care about any of these people or situations.

I hereby defecate upon this waste of time.

[–] gotmyorangecrush 9 years ago

Honestly, I really wanted to like this film. I personally think it had one of the best trailers ever made. After watching the trailer, not only was it the film I was most looking forward to seeing during that period of time, but I also believed it was bound to win a couple of oscars. The trailer just made it seem like this incredible journey and with Ton Hanks and Hally Berry starring....well, I thought for sure it was going to be a great film. I wasn't sure if it was going to be successful at the box office, but I was 100% convinced after watching the trailer that the movie would be fantastic, would win a bunch of awardsm and would be one of the more memorable films I have seen in a LONG time.

Unfortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong and I have to give credit to the people who made the trailer as it wound up being FAR more entertaining than the film itself. Its an extremely ambitious movie, to that there is zero doubt, but it just jumped around too much and the stories just didn't feel as connected as I thought they would. If it werent for the fact the stars played multiple roles, you would have had no idea that those roles were meant to represent the same characters, just in different lives. Ultimately, I really can't point to any one thing that made this film so disappointing. All I can really say is it just didn't work for me. Some books just can't be adapted into films and carry the same weight and meaning in both mediums. I wound up reading the book after being so disappointed in the film and the book is fantastic. It just didn't translate well into the motion picture medium. It really just felt like a jumbled mess of misc scenes and yes, I have watched this film more than once as I think multiple viewings for films like this are really mandatory. The 2nd viewing allows you to see things and make connections that are much more difficult in the first viewing. But even with multiple viewings, this film just could never find its groove, at least not for me. Again, it really just feels like a jumbled mess of scenes and misc stories. The real meaning behind the film is lost on the film side.

Honestly, I don't think this is a case of bad film making. I just think this is a case of having a story that simply doesnt adapt well to motion pictures. Its like World War Z. If a true adaptation of that book was ever made, it would be a complete mess and would just feel liks misc stories whose only connection was the zombie apocalypse. Of course, some people claimed Lord of the Rings was unfilmable, but Peter Jackson did a brilliant job adapting those books to the big screen. Still, I do believe that there are books out there that just can't be made into films, not without making significant changes and I believe Cloud Atlas is ultimately one of those books. It just doesnt work on the big screen like it does on the written page.

Still Shooting With Film!

[–] omarpowermotivation 9 years ago

I just watched this movie and I have to agree with you.

Here's an info graphic to simplify things: http://www.scene-stealers.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/11/cloud-atlas-infographic.png

Based on that info graphic I still don't see what the point is.

I thought the film was essentially going to be how the events and choices in the 1800s have an impact on the event in 2200s later. As if the decisions we make now effect future generations. In ways they did capture that i.e. Tom Hanks character going from a killer to a hero, BUT why does Tom Hanks character regress to a killer in 2012 after helping Halle Berry's character in the 70s--it just doesn't seem like the logical progression for that character. Some characters even had a dead end storyline that really was irrelevant to the man narrative i.e. the retirement home breakout.

I don't understand WHAT happened either. What was it ALL building up to. I thought all characters and story lines with each generation would have this domino effect to a CORE plot that would get resolved by movie's end, but that never happened. It's just a bunch of different stories poorly woven together that really went nowhere.

I give this movie a 3.5/10

[–] smilesooner 9 years ago

omarpowermotivation - I am not here to defend the movie - to each his own and Cloud Atlas is a very atypical movie with a very ambitious reach. See my discussion below for more opinion on all this.

But Cloud Atlas is not that unusual in the loose threads department. Many, many movies leave questions unanswered and characters adrift, still in their story. If Cloud Atlas had attempted to neatly complete all the story lines, it would have done a supreme injustice to it's central story and premise.

For me, the movie is based on the idea that we are immortal souls who reincarnate many, many times here on earth, and often with the same souls, as we work on ourselves to evolve our consciousness.

Six lifetimes is a drop in the ocean of our existence, so this small slice may be very significant for some souls and not so much for others. You don't become a concert pianist after a few years of practice - it takes time.

So in the movie, some souls make little or insignificant progress, while others make more. Tom Hanks' characters or incarnations clearly make the most evolutionary progress so he is the central character in many ways - certainly he is, in service to the central theme. And Halle Berry is there to show the importance of those souls we work with over many lifetimes. We partner up in all this with a number of fellow travelers.

Tom Hanks makes progress and then slips back, before successfully evolving past his darker aspects. The lifetime where he slips back may very well have been a more challenging one. A person is a soul with certain characteristics and you incarnate into a family and an environment that will further challenge you.

A soul could incarnate into a middle class family and go on to become a very successful entrepreneur. In a following life, the same soul could incarnate into a poor family amidst poverty and not succeed in the same way. The challenge was greater, in service of a greater stretch to achieve evolutionary progress. Nothing in life is a straight line and over many lifetimes, it is the same. I'm just using money success here as a proxy metric for evolution. We don't exist in this universe to make scads of money as a central goal.

Cloud Atlas would have betrayed itself, if it had neatly completed all the characters and the story lines. It was meant to show a slice of existence for a small group of souls, all working with different challenges and experiences. Tom Hanks, more than any other character, showed why we are all here as his arc of evolution and development was the most dramatic and obvious.

On a daily or monthly basis, few of us have significant lives that fit neatly into a story, but over the course of a lifetime the narrative structure of our life becomes more clear. Cloud Atlas examined life on a much bigger scale and that limited what could be said and shown for most of the souls presented.

The movie is not perfect, but I think it is too easy to dismiss it due to shortcomings that were inevitable, given its ambition. And for me, Cloud Atlas was an overwhelming success on many levels. It is a movie to be savored and considered in what it says about our lives and our reasons for living.

[–] smilesooner 9 years ago

What is the point of this movie? First step is entertainment. But I assume that you are asking the major idea or theme behind the movie.

I would suggest that the major idea behind Cloud Atlas is nothing less than the meaning of life. Really.

We are here to evolve. Raise our level of consciousness. And we do that by having our consciousness reincarnate over and over again, and often with the same consciousnesses around us. We are immortal souls who come to this physical existence to work on our issues and limits. The movie is an ambitious look at 6 time periods. Most of us choose to be here for many, many more so this movie is just a slice of existence within an eternity.

Some characters start out good and essentially stay there - Halle Berry. Some characters remain pretty bad - Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant. And Tom Hanks is the most complex as he starts out as a murderer. Advances. Murders again, but overcomes great fear to be a hero in the end. Halle Berry is central to Tom Hanks' development.

For me, this is the most ambitious movie ever made. It goes way beyond mythology to explore the central issue in all our lives. Why are we here? What's the big picture? The movie may not succeed for many, but it does for me. I cannot watch it without getting choked up. Many characters are ones to deeply care about, but Bae Doona as Somni 451 was a standout. She was a great hero.

Now you may consider my reasoning new age nonsense. I would have thought the same until not that long ago. I don't know how the movie would come across to a strict scientific materialist unless they could suspend their prejudices.

I am now convinced that Cloud Atlas essentially outlines how things work here on earth. Wacky? Maybe. But it now makes sense to me. If you want to find out more, you could check out Thomas Campbell, a physicist who puts forth his Big Theory of Everything in three books and lots of free YouTube videos.

Cloud Atlas is not for everyone. That's for sure. But the movie hit me between the eyes like no movie since I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey when I was ten years old, in the original Cinerama. The big picture. Wow.

[–] steffeeric 9 years ago

Wonderful synopsis. I feared I would hate this movie but I actually loved it. It was an insanely ambitious effort and for the most part they pull it off. It is really hard to pin down an exact message of the movie because it is all over the place as is life.

Many of those that stand up to the "establishment" meet awful fates but in doing so produce change. This is one of the most yin-yang films I can ever recall.

I highly recommend the show Black Mirror to anyone that likes this movie because it has the same type of feel to me.

[–] smilesooner 9 years ago

Thanks steffeeric. Cloud Atlas is certainly a movie worthy of discussion. You're right. It's really hard to pin down an exact message because the message is the big picture - the nature of our lives.

The picture is so big and we and our lives are so unique, that there is no one size fits all message. I don't think you were looking for that, but the movie is so different because it does give us a view of the enormous scope of our existence.

So there is a message and it is basically...evolve! Do what it takes to evolve. Evolve your everlasting soul through your efforts in each lifetime. And enjoy the ride.

No one demonstrates this theme better than Tom Hanks. In his first incarnation, he is only in it for himself. He is quite content to cause the death of another person in order to simply line his own pockets.

The Halle Berry character is present in this story, but only peripherally. Perhaps that is the first time Tom and Halle are exposed to each other.

In the 1970's story, Halle and Tom really connect and Tom Hanks proves that he is capable of courage in service to other people and also falls in love with Halle, only to have his life end abruptly, but clearly he evolved in that lifetime. And he made a profound connection with Halle. All this shows the shape of things to come as he and Halle work together, to evolve together.

In the contemporary story at the book party, Tom makes a momentary connection with Halle - those magical times when two "strangers" connect and there is a definite spark. But it seems that Tom's character has slipped backwards in this life. He has lived a life of violence and there is too much momentum in that direction. He confronts a perceived enemy and kills again.

But here at least he is responding to a critic and the critic's attack on Tom. And the critic is less than fully evolved himself. This doesn't justify the murder, but perhaps it demonstrates some evolution in Tom. Tom is not simply killing for profit although he is concerned about money. And obviously Tom was born into rough circumstances in this lifetime so he had a real challenge to move beyond his violent tendencies and upbringing. If he had met Halle earlier, perhaps he would have overcome those challenges. Maybe he just would have slugged the critic. Perhaps his soul got too ambitious since he had seemed to make so much progress in his previous life, but his life ended early in his previous life as the scientist - shortly after he demonstrated that evolutionary jump. Perhaps he didn't have enough time in that incarnation to integrate those profound changes.

But we do experience challenges in life to push us to evolve. No evolution would take place without the challenges we face and yes, ultimately chose for ourselves. The Hugo Weaving character is apparently in love with the "natural order" of life,as he sees it, which he talks about in at least two episodes. But that is a very small picture view, which contradicts and opposes the evolution we are all working on. In the first episode, slavery and the inferiority of fellow humans due to skin color is the "natural order". And in Korea in the future, the absolute power of the state is the "natural order". We have to defeat these small views in order to evolve and that can lead to suffering in a lifetime, as Somni 451 experienced, but she returned in the final episode as a kind and strong woman. There is no defeat in this evolutionary process.

So in the last episode, in terms of the time line, Halle and Tom meet up again. At first Tom is showing himself to be a decent person, but he is dominated by fear and mistrust - even when he meets Halle for the first time. But he warms up and sure enough he gets past his demon - metaphorically and in his waking nightmare. He is apparently inspired by events and by Halle to rise above his fears in service to his evolution and the evolution of many others.

The Tom Hanks character throughout is ultimately a triumph of the evolution of a consciousness, or soul or whatever you want to call it. And Halle Berry plays a pivotal role in all this and they then go on to evolve together, producing a family. You couldn't have a happier ending to a movie. But of course in terms of Halle and Tom, and the rest of the characters, they'll just keep evolving as we all do.

So the message is to evolve. That's why we're here. And use everything you have to evolve - all your talents, skills, and gifts. Courage, curiosity, a sense of wonder, kindness, patience, tolerance, perseverance, adventure, generosity, and a hundred other characteristics are all super valuable in service to your evolution and they also contribute to a great life, well lived.

I don't mean to lecture in this. I am writing this as much for myself to help me understand this great movie. No other movie has meant as much to me as this one, and I am still trying to figure it all out.

But thank you for the recommendation of of the Black Mirror - I'll check it out for sure.

[–] jeffwhalen 9 years ago

What a *beep* sandwich!