'Cloud Atlas' has been called 'ambitious' and 'visionary,' and I suppose, those are fair and accurate assessments. Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) is our modern-day model for freedom and individuality in a wonderfully memorable tale of always remaining young at heart. There are also issues of selfishness and self-gratification, whether in our means for survival, as in Tom Hanks's Zachry living in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, or hopes for martyrdom, like Bae's service clone. While each of the six storylines feature many romantic elements, displaying our deep-rooted desire to love and be loved, they also highlight an endless struggle against unsympathetic greed, oppression, and a constant feeling of subjection, as in the stories of journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), fabricant Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae) and aspiring composer Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw). Taken to a deeper, more thoughtful extreme, the notion is very much Foucauldian, since knowledge is passed through the arts, specifically writing, and becomes theatrical representations that reveal weaknesses within a given power structure.

As a cinematic experience, the beauty in enjoying something as unique as 'Cloud Atlas' is in watching this unconscious will and impetus within human inspiration and imagination explored with some small level of seriousness.

Without having to enter too far into spoiler territory, Ewing's ordeal becomes the catalyst and ideal to other events, the source of a ceaseless wave of thought igniting the passions which make us human. Adam Ewing's (Jim Sturgess) near-fatal experience aboard a slave ship and the friendship he strikes with a Moriori slave (David Gyasi) inspires an aspiring musician nearly a century later who discovers the book practically by chance. Even if you fail to pinpoint the location of the person making the sound, it remains a reasonable reflection of its source. The consequences of one person's actions are like a ripple effect on still waters, causing a slow progression of change, which implies a person's life and decisions, insignificant as they may seem at the time of their doing, have the potential to inspire future generations.Ĭliché as it may be, the idea is similar to the effects of an echo. Told in a nonlinear, disjointed fashion, where distant lives - both culturally as well as spatiotemporally - are presumably interrelated, which also makes up the bulk of the central mystery, this link is clearly expressed within the narrative's more straightforward arrangement, serving as its surface-level draw. It's this commonality - this very fine, imperceptible, but also eternal thread essentially linking our lives to one another - which appears to be at the core of this wildly imaginative and complex sci-fi drama. Our will to learn from our experiences, an inclination for an emotional response affecting our rational intellect, and our introspective sense of self-awareness play a major role in how we choose to define our being and understand it as a commonality between all of humanity. The one consistent theme connecting the six, superficially different plots (or perhaps, subplots?), each separated by the invisible, abstract, but still very real gulfs of time, are those inherent, unassailable qualities which drive the existence of our species.

Spanning several centuries, while focusing on small, intimate, and seemingly arbitrary moments of human interaction, 'Cloud Atlas' takes on the bold endeavor of capturing what could only be understood as the human condition.

Cloud atlas audio book