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.
Everything is connected: an 1849 diary of an ocean voyage across the Pacific, letters from a composer to his lover, a thriller about a conspiracy at a nuclear power plant, a farce about a publisher in a nursing home;, a rebellious clone in futuristic Korea, and the tale of a tribe living on post-apocalyptic Hawaii far in the future.Written by
Anonymous
The advertising music includes M83's "Outro." See more »
Goofs
The 1849 slave trade contract that Ewing was bringing back to his Father in the states was unenforceable. The slave trade had been outlawed in the United States on January 1, 1808, the first date permitted by the Constitution. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807). Slaves could no longer be imported into the United States. The slave trade was dead. Likewise, California was a "free state" where owning slaves was outlawed in 1849. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Zachry:
[shivering beside the fire]
Oh, lonesome night. And babbits bawling, the wind biting the bone. Wind like this... full of voices. Ancestry howling at you, yibbering stories, all voices tied up into one. One voice differing. One voice, whispering out there, spying from the dark. The fangy devil, Old Georgie hisself. Mm. Now your ear up close, and I'll yarn you about the first time we met, eye to eye.
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Crazy Credits
The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer each had a full production crew for their respective stories. The end credits show this by rolling the Wachowskis' crew's credits on the left side of the screen and Tykwer's crew's credits on the right. See more »
I didn't find it to be a mess at all, and it was certainly the best thing the Wachowskis have ever done. I'm not sure how the directing duties were distributed, so I'll uniformly praise Tom Tykwer as well.
I haven't read the book, so I can't make any comparisons there, but I don't often leave a film adaptation wanting to read the novel afterwards, as I did after seeing this.
Visually stunning, epic in scope, a strong score; the sort of film that you're constantly amazed was ever made and happy it was. Equal parts comedy, romance, thriller, and dystopian speculative fiction, it really is an astounding mix of disparate elements.
The biggest overall failure was definitely some of the make-up effects - trying to turn Doona Bae into a believable red-headed Caucasian woman was simply distracting - but the overall art & sound design was incredible.
If I could turn channels while watching TV and switch between stories and narratives as seamlessly and as deftly as the editing in Cloud Atlas, it would honestly be hard to go back to simply watching one show at a time.
Truly a marvel of multitasking on so many levels. Great stuff.
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I didn't find it to be a mess at all, and it was certainly the best thing the Wachowskis have ever done. I'm not sure how the directing duties were distributed, so I'll uniformly praise Tom Tykwer as well.
I haven't read the book, so I can't make any comparisons there, but I don't often leave a film adaptation wanting to read the novel afterwards, as I did after seeing this.
Visually stunning, epic in scope, a strong score; the sort of film that you're constantly amazed was ever made and happy it was. Equal parts comedy, romance, thriller, and dystopian speculative fiction, it really is an astounding mix of disparate elements.
The biggest overall failure was definitely some of the make-up effects - trying to turn Doona Bae into a believable red-headed Caucasian woman was simply distracting - but the overall art & sound design was incredible.
If I could turn channels while watching TV and switch between stories and narratives as seamlessly and as deftly as the editing in Cloud Atlas, it would honestly be hard to go back to simply watching one show at a time.
Truly a marvel of multitasking on so many levels. Great stuff.