What's the point of this movie?

Thank you, Farshnoshket, best summary ever.
I am sorry that people who are not able to enjoy this unique story react in anger, but I am glad that there are those who do get how clever and uniquely visual this film is!

by Farshnoshket » Sun Feb 7 2016 13:34:16 Flag ▼ | Reply |
IMDb member since August 2005
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.