Cloud Atlasis a 2012 epic science fiction film written and directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. Based on the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, it has multiple plots occurring during six eras in time. Cast members perform multiple roles in these time periods.

Kudos to all the filmmakers for adapting this famously “unfilmable” novel in such an inventive way. There are SIX separate timelines that switch after every scene, but instead of the plot, the narrative continuity follows the theme of the film. Once you clue in to that overall theme, it is no longer confusing when the story jumps from a runaway slave in the 1800s to a post apocalyptic future battle between some of the last humans remaining on earth.All this audacious style and structure makes Cloud Atlas a curiosity to say the least, but the film is lifted to the realm of “Masterpiece” by the all-star ensemble cast. This impressive collection of actors fires off amazing performances like the Expendables 2 fires off high caliber bullets. I mean this will long be considered one of the greatest acting clinics ever filmed, and a high point in some already outstanding careers, as the end credits alone are astonishing to watch.Overall this is a movie that transcends the simple elements of stars and plots and special effects, and boldly assumes to take the cinema to another level of storytelling, much like Avatar took film to a new level of technology a few years ago. The ambition, the technical brilliance and the passion that was put into this film makes it one of the great epics of our time.

More Like ThisRelated Movie NewsPhotosCloud AtlasMovie Info

• Director
• Lana Wachowski,Lilly Wachowski,Tom Tykwer
• Producer
• Grant Hill,Stefan Arndt,Lana Wachowski,Tom Tykwer,Lilly Wachowski
• Screenwriter
• Lana Wachowski,Lilly Wachowski,Tom Tykwer
• Distributor
• Warner Bros. Pictures
• Production Co
• Cloud Atlas Production,Anarchos Productions Inc.,X-Filme Creative Pool
• Rating
• R (Sexuality/Nudity|Language|Some Drug Use|Violence)
• Genre
• Drama,Mystery & Thriller,Sci-Fi
• Original Language
• English
• Release Date (Theaters)
• Oct 26, 2012, Wide
• Release Date (Streaming)
• Mar 1, 2014
• Box Office (Gross USA)
• $27.1M
• Runtime
• 2h 52m
• Sound Mix
• SDDS,Dolby A,DTS

I was never, ever bored by “Cloud Atlas.” On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in “Cloud Atlas” take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it “means,” is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.

• 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.—Anonymous
• The reincarnation of a soul travels through time beginning with the diary of a potential slave-owner voyaging across the Pacific in 1849, then a talented composer writing letters to his lover in the Britain’s 1930s, followed by a reporter investigating a corrupt case about a US nuclear power plant in the 1970s, succeeded by a publisher’s comical entrapment in a nursing home in 2012, followed by a clone’s thrilling escape and rebellion in 2144’s Korea, and finally a tribesman fighting cannibals in a forgotten colony world past 2300. Each story challenges the corrupt norms of the time, changing the course of history, and shaping the future through acts of kindness, big and small.
• The reincarnation of a soul travels through time in 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. Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story, a time-shifting weave of six interlinking narratives, with diverse settings from the savagery of a Pacific Island in the 1850s to a dystopian Korea of the near future. Based on the best-selling novel Cloud Atlas written by David Mitchell. Featuring an all-star cast led by Halle Berry and Tom Hanks.—Chris Yako
• Directors Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, and Lana Wachowski team up to helm this adaptation of David Mitchell’s popular novel Cloud Atlas. The trio have put together an all-star cast, including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, and Hugh Grant, to play various characters over the course of several different historical time periods.
• This film follows the stories of six people’s “souls” across time, and the stories are interweaved as they advance, showing how they all interact. It is about how the people’s lives are connected with and influence each other.The first storyline follows a lawyer named Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) in the early 1800s, whose family is in the slave trade. He has been sent to the Pacific to arrange a contract for some Maori slaves with a slave trader from that area. During his return voyage home, Ewing saves the life of a native man named Autua (David Gyasi) who is a runaway slave stowing away on the ship. Ewing also realizes he is being poisoned by a doctor he trusted, Dr. Henry Goose (Tom Hanks), who is robbing Ewing as he gets sicker and sicker. Autua saves Ewing’s life and his views of the natives are changed in important ways as he comes to know the man. Adam Ewing’s journal, which chronicled his ordeal and rescue by a runaway slave, are later published into a book which is discovered by the next character in the storyline. Ewing and his wife decide to quit the family slave trade and move east to become abolitionists.The second storyline follows the tragically short life of a talented young wannabe composer in the 1930’s named Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) who finagles himself into a position aiding an aging composer, Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent). While working for Ayrs, Robert Frobisher begins reading the published chronicle of Adam Ewing’s journal which he has found among the many books at Ayrs’s mansion. He never finishes reading the journal and it is unclear what effect it has on the creation of his own musical composition. Robert enters a sexual relationship with Ayrs’ wife, which, along with Ayrs’ own arrogance and presumption of superiority of position and class, tears him and Ayrs apart. Ayrs threatens to ruin Frobisher’s already rickety reputation when he encounters Frobisher’s own work, the Cloud Atlas Sextet. Ayrs forces Frobisher to accept second place in the credit for the Sextet. Frobisher inadvertently shoots Ayrs during an argument then flees. When Ayrs survives the shooting, and sets police after him, he realizes he is facing utter ruin, as Ayrs threatened. Frobisher completes the Sextet, then sends it to his lover and friend, a Cambridge student, Rufus Sixmith (James D’Arcy) and commits suicide. Rufus Sixsmith meets the main character in the third storyline much later in his life, and we discover Robert Frobisher’s Cloud Atlas Sextet has been recorded into an album and although it is an obscure recording, it has clearly affected people’s lives.The third storyline is about a journalist in the 1970’s named Luisa Rey (Halle Berry). She meets Rufus Sixsmith in a chance encounter while being stuck on a broken elevator. Sixsmith by now is a renowned physicist. After leaving the elevator, Sixsmith later attempts to re-contact Rey and reveal that there is a conspiracy afoot to cover up a report about the flaws in the design of a nuclear power reactor. When she is about to meet-up with Sixsmith, she finds him just recently dead, an apparent suicide. Her journalistic instincts kick in, telling her there is more to the story than a man committing suicide, and she discovers that a report on the reactor written by Sixsmith can reveal the terrible secret. Along with the report, Rey also finds a collection of letters written from Frobisher to Sixsmith many years earlier while Frobisher was working on the Cloud Atlas Sextet composition. A scientist named Isaac Sachs (Tom Hanks) meets Rey and helps her. The CEO, Lloyd Hooks (Hugh Grant) sends his head of security, Joe Napier (Keith David) and his agent, Bill Smoke (Hugo Weaving) to stop her. Smoke has already killed Sixsmith, and then Sachs, and attempts to kill Rey as she gets closer and closer to the truth. Smoke is stopped in the end by Joe Napier. As Napier and Rey escape death by the hands of Smoke, Luisa Rey publishes an article leading to the shutdown of the reactor after revealing the contents of the Sixsmith Report.The fourth storyline is a modern-day tale of Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent), the owner of a small publishing company, who has published a small biographical book by a lowlife thug. While the book has literally no hope of making much if any money, this changes when the author-thug kills a critic of his book by throwing him off a balcony to his death. Suddenly the book has legs and Cavendish is rolling in money from royalties. When friends of the thug come looking for his royalties, Cavendish is put in a tight situation, as he doesn’t have the money they are demanding, and clearly the hooligans aren’t particularly constrained by the law. While traveling by train to the hide-out address his brother recommended, Cavendish is seen reading a manuscript that was sent to him. The manuscript is titled, “Half Lives – The First Luisa Rey Mystery” and is the romanticized version of the third storyline. He arrives at the “hotel” his brother sent him to, which, only the next day, is revealed to be a nursing home for the elderly. Residents are treated as prisoners, and each attempt to get out is stopped by the staff (which is revealed to be the nursing home’s primary purpose, to lock up troublesome relatives). With the assistance of three other residents, Cavendish eventually creates an escape plan and they manage to escape. Once he makes good on his escape, he writes a best-selling tale of his adventures, which is later made into a biopic.The fifth storyline is about Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae), a clone bred for work in a Papa Song fast-food restaurant in Korea (now called Neo Seoul) in the far future. In this stark future, she lives in a day-to-day world, each day identical to the next, existing only to serve food to “consumers,” but her limited life is revealed to be less than she is capable of when another of the clones inadvertently awakens her from her daily slumber. Sonmi-451, through chance, discovers a fragment of the biopic film of “The Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” on a cell-phone/PDA left at the Papa’s Song fast-food restaurant. This film lays the seeds of the never-ending struggle against injustice. She starts to question all the things she has seen and experienced, including the believed purpose of her existence, from which other clones, and eventually she, will “ascend” after eleven years of work. When her friend, the other clone, is killed, she meets a man named Hae-Joo Im, who it is revealed was behind her friend, and then her, being exposed to something more than their day-to-day existence. They have been attempting to prove that the clones are the equal of “naturally born” humans (“purebloo