Cloud Atlas (2012)
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The film premiered on September 9, 2012, at the 37th Toronto International Film Festival and was released on October 26, 2012 in conventional and IMAX cinemas.
Cloud Atlas polarized critics, and has subsequently been included on various Best Film and Worst Film lists. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for Tykwer (who co-scored the film), Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil.
The official synopsis for Cloud Atlas describes the film as:
The film consists of six interrelated and interwoven stories that take the viewer from the South Pacific in the 19th century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Unlike the original novel, the film is structured, according to novelist David Mitchell, "as a sort of pointillist mosaic: We stay in each of the six worlds just long enough for the hook to be sunk in, and from then on the film darts from world to world at the speed of a plate-spinner, revisiting each narrative for long enough to propel it forward."An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.
The six stories are:
- South Pacific Ocean, 1849: Adam Ewing, a young American lawyer from San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, has come to the Chatham Islands to conclude a business arrangement with Reverend Gilles Horrox for his father-in-law, Haskell Moore. He witnesses the whipping of a Moriori slave, Autua, who stows away on Ewing's ship, and convinces Ewing to advocate for him to join the crew as a freeman. Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Goose slowly poisons Ewing, claiming it to be the cure for a parasitic worm, aiming to steal Ewing's valuables. When Goose attempts to administer the fatal dose, Autua saves Ewing. Returning to America, Ewing and his wife, Tilda, denounce her father's complicity in slavery.
- Cambridge, England and Edinburgh, Scotland, 1936: Robert Frobisher, a 23-year-old bisexual English musician, finds work as an amanuensis to famous composer Vyvyan Ayrs, allowing Frobisher the time and inspiration to compose his own masterpiece, "The Cloud Atlas Sextet". At Ayrs' house, Frobisher reads a copy of Ewing's journal. Ayrs wishes to take credit for the piece, and threatens to expose Frobisher's scandalous background if he does not comply. Ayrs is shot by Frobisher, who flees to a hotel. There, he finishes his masterpiece and shoots himself only moments before his lover Rufus Sixsmith arrives to deter him.
- San Francisco, California, 1973: Luisa Rey is a journalist who by chance meets an older Sixsmith, now a nuclear physicist. Sixsmith tips off Rey to a conspiracy regarding the safety of a new nuclear reactor run by Lloyd Hooks, but is killed by Hooks' hitman Bill Smoke before he can give her the report that proves it. Rey finds and reads Frobisher's letters to Sixsmith. Isaac Sachs, another scientist at the power plant who seems to find her familiar, passes her a copy of the Sixsmith report. However, Smoke kills Sachs and also runs Rey's car off a bridge. With help from the plant's head of security, Joe Napier, she evades another attempt against her life, that results in Smoke's death, and exposes the plot to use a nuclear accident for the benefit of oil companies.
- United Kingdom, 2012: Timothy Cavendish, a 65-year-old publisher, has a windfall when Dermot Hoggins, the gangster author whose book he has published, infamously murders a critic and is sent to jail. When the author's associates threaten Cavendish's life to get his share of the profits, Cavendish turns to his brother Denholme for help. Denholme tricks him into hiding in a nursing home, where he is held against his will and treated poorly by the tyrannical Nurse Noakes. Cavendish and a few of his fellow "inmates" then plot a successful escape. Cavendish receives a manuscript of a mystery novel based on Rey's life.
- Neo Seoul, (Korea), 2144: Sonmi-451, a genetically-engineered fabricant (clone) server at a fast-food restaurant, is interviewed before her execution. She recounts how she was released from her compliant life of servitude by Hae-Joo Chang, a member of "Union", a rebel movement. While in hiding, she watches a movie based on Cavendish's adventure. The Union rebels reveal to her that fabricants like her are "recycled" into food for future fabricants. She decides that the system of society based on slavery and exploitation of fabricants is intolerable, and is brought to Hawaii to make a public broadcast of her manifesto. Hae-Joo and the other Union members are killed in a firefight ending in Sonmi's capture. After telling her story, she is executed.
- The Big Island of Hawaii on post-apocalyptic Earth (dated "106 winters after "The Fall", identified as 2321): Zachry lives with his sister and young niece Catkin in a primitive society called "The Valley" after most of humanity has died during "The Fall"; the Valley tribesmen worship Sonmi as a goddess. Zachry is plagued by visions of his people's perception of the devil, "Old Georgie" who manipulates him into giving in to his fear, leading to the murder of his friend and friend's son by the cannibal Kona tribe. Zachry's village is visited by Meronym, a member of the "Prescients", a society holding on to remnants of technology from before the Fall. In exchange for saving Catkin from a stonefish sting, Zachry agrees to guide Meronym into the mountains in search of Cloud Atlas, a communications station where she is able to send a message to people who have left Earth and now live on other planets. At the station, Meronym says that Sonmi was a human and not a goddess as the Valley tribes believe; Old Georgie almost convinces Zachry to kill Meronym for blasphemy but Zachry changes his mind after seeing a video of Sonmi. After returning, Zachry discovers the slaughter of his tribe at the hands of the Kona. Zachry kills the Kona Chief and rescues Catkin, but they are attacked by more Kona warriors and have to be rescued by Meronym. Zachry and Catkin join Meronym and the Prescients in a journey to a new world.
A seventh time period, several decades after the Hawaiian one, is featured in the film's prologue and epilogue. In the prologue, a lone, elderly Zachry delivers a monologue, and his location is not revealed. In the epilogue, Zachry is revealed to have been telling these stories to his numerous grandchildren on an alien planet with two moons in the night sky. Meronym emerges from their home and they embrace.
