"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."
Cloud Atlas is a 2012 German drama and science fiction film written,
produced and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer also nominated
for the 'Saturn Awards' 2013... Well what isn't?
The Wachowski's of course gave us the Matirx Triology and its
highly significant symbolic themes, not least when it comes to 'human enslavement'
which is what Cloud Atlas also alludes to.
Where does one start? Well the the film consists of six interrelated
and interwoven stories spanning different time periods. The film is structured,
according to the British novelist David Mitchell and weaves together many 'parallel
narratives - lives' that, as the author states in his book,
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and
by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ”
The struggle for freedom over tyranny is encapsulated in its
storyline, along with themes that can be found time after time in all myths and religions
and more blatantly in today's art and film.
In all cases a force seeks to enlighten and liberate humanity, the other seeks to dominate and control and this struggle exists on many levels, even in today’s world. However, when one views opposites from a higher perspective, what we often realize is that both sides are 'projections' of the same source or knowledge. Even the word ‘evil’ reversed gives us ‘live’ and our ‘life force’ can be used to do great works both good and bad. What we call past, present and future are all existing at the same time through our life-force. We are 'actors' playing roles in the great cinema of life, and Cloud Atlas illustrates this very well, in my view.
In all cases a force seeks to enlighten and liberate humanity, the other seeks to dominate and control and this struggle exists on many levels, even in today’s world. However, when one views opposites from a higher perspective, what we often realize is that both sides are 'projections' of the same source or knowledge. Even the word ‘evil’ reversed gives us ‘live’ and our ‘life force’ can be used to do great works both good and bad. What we call past, present and future are all existing at the same time through our life-force. We are 'actors' playing roles in the great cinema of life, and Cloud Atlas illustrates this very well, in my view.
How we perceive the past and the future, as always, depends on
what knowledge or information that is available to us in the 'present'. With human perception there is always
'more than one movie showing' at any one time.
Six movies in ‘One’ - Many lives in one
The movie 'moves' through 6 main plots, from the South Pacific,
Cambridge, Edinburgh (UK) to San Francisco, a futuristic Korea and of course a place
called Big Island where an isolated society are dwelling after what is called the
'Fall' (I’ll come to that later).
You can read the plot in more detail here
We have a melange of lives (scenes in the movie) played brilliantly
by a handful of actors an actresses that symbolically show us how we also live many
'roles' (what some call past lives) interlocking with the same people (souls) no matter
what time, or what place we 'see' our selves, within the grand illusion.
We have themes of enslavement, escape and of course 'life an
death'. Especially the 'Cavendish tale' based on the publisher Tmothy Cavendish
(no relation to the Duke and Duchess of Cavendish) played by Jim Broadbent (below), and
how he wrestles with past choices and decisions relating to 'love'.
Cavendish's plight is no different to another character in the
movie called Issac Sachs (played by Tom Hanks) a man who meets the journalist Luisa
Rey (Halle Berry), while 'exposing the agenda' to let loose the horror of a nuclear
power company fronted by Lloyd Hooks (Hugh Grant) and the legacy that will eventually
leave humanity 'dead'- what is called the 'Fall' in the film.
On love and destiny the character Issiac Sachs says:
"Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood
as we understand the theory of relativity, and principles of uncertainty. Phenomena
that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction.
Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what
I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, they can shape and alter
who we imagine ourself to be, begin long before we are born, and continue after
we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood
moment to moment, at each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential
direction.”
I have personally felt this many times in my life where different points have intersected, when we encounter someone (or a place), which can bring us back to a memory of a life that was as 'real' as the one we are experiencing now.
At the same time we see other various parallel scenes (realities):
In the year
2321 Zachry (Tom Hanks) guides Meronym through what was once an advanced city;
In
1849 as Adam lies ill, Dr Henry Goose (below) cuts off one of Adam's waistcoat buttons and smiles
to himself as he is slowly poising him for his wealth...
In 1973 Luisa finds Sixsmith's report in the hood of her car; in 2012
Cavendish sits in his room he sees a note slide under the door; in 1936 Frobisher
is scribbling away writing his music (below); in 2144 the Enforcers escort Sonmi-451 out of
her cell and 'All worlds collide and all actors are the same souls playing
different roles in what we 'perceive to be lives'.
Death (suicide too) of course is a common theme in the main plot
of the movie, brought home by the character Robert Frobisher, a bisexual English
musician, who works as an amanuensis to composer Vyvyan Ayrs, allowing Frobisher
(above) the time and inspiration to compose his own masterpiece, "The Cloud Atlas Sextet.
The same Cloud Atlas is the map by which we move through life. Robert Frobisher
writes to his true love, Saxsmith in the late 1930's while composing the Sextet,
“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant
ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
Again later we have amazing imagery of Frobisher breaking ornaments
in the 1930's (above left) and saying "All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended."
while in the year 2144 the now freed slave Sonmi and Chang
are making love as the scene goes back to Robert Frobisher, saying
" One may transcend any convention, if only one can first
conceive of doing so."
While far into the so called future, (2321) Zachry (Tom Hanks)
sits on top of a mountain as the sun sets with Meronym asleep by the fire, he takes
his cloak off and puts it on her as she sleeps...
And again Frobisher says;
"Moments like this, I can feel
your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an
illusion."
Of course the separation is the 'Fall of humanity" as recorded
in many ancient texts and art forms and powerful actions through 'acts of love' are what brings us to the realization that we are not separate from each other. All we have to do is be in the love vibration!
The Fall
The movie moves in and out of these mini plots that cleverly
attempting to show moments of 'de ja vu, synchronistic timings and feels that we
all share when we meet someone and we just "know" that we have met them
before? This has happened to me several times and its powerful when it happens.
Why? because it is what constitutes the magic of life. And shows us that we are
more than just a human in one life, one genetic space suit, in one space time continuum.
We are more than this.
The magic of 'perfect timings' and how we follow our intuition
to sometimes suddenly changing our 'life path' and becoming part of 'another way', 'another
life' is shown in the movie. Aren't our lives like being in a movie? This concept is shown quite graphically when the character
Zachry (Tom Hanks) witness (watches in fear) the canablistic killing of Adam and his son as they make
their offerings on Big Island (what is meant to be Hawaii), by the Kona (a tribe
of cannibals below).
Interesting visual links to Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto (above right),
which alludes to an ancient blood drinking tribes that were also remnants of a
much earlier ‘fallen’ global civilisation.
Zachry (Tom Hanks) is thrust back to the very same spot in another
time (life) and both realities 'merge' for him, when he confronts his own 'devilish
voice, the place his personal 'demon' called 'Old Georgie' (below) in the film, first appears.
The fall of Zachry is in many ways the ‘fall of man’ symbolically,
and what happens to one 'effects us all'. Ain' t that so?
Interestingly, The name Zechariah (Zachry) is derived from the
Hebrew meaning "God has remembered", which is what the Hanks character
'does' just that in the film. Muslim theology maintains that Zechariah, along with
John the Baptist and Jesus, ushered in a 'new era of prophets' all of whom came from
the priestly descent of Amram, the father of the prophet Aaron. The fact that, of
all the priests, Zechariah who was given the duty of 'keeping care' of Mary,
shows his status as a pious man. Zachry in the movie isn't pious but he certainly a 'religious' man of his kind.
The Devil on Zachry’s shoulder
Zachry's overshadowing presence, an entity called Old Georgie
played by Hugo Weaver (Agent Smith in the Matrix), is the nagging 'voice in his
head'. The fact that Hugo Weavers character reminded me of Papa Lazarou from the hit comedy The League of Gentlemen, made me
chuckle. “You’re my ‘life’ now”…
Old Georgie (the devil) moves unseen and appears and reappears
to torment the "mind" of Zachry, just as the Archons in ancient Gnostic
literature, do as 'mind parasites'. A mind possession is taking place and this
is symbolic of what could be the ‘devil in your ear’ in religious texts. The author
Colin Wilson wrote a book called The Mind Parasites in 1967 which told of the story
about a about Professor Gilbert Austin's conflict with what were called the Tsathogguans,
'invisible mind parasites' that 'menace the most brilliant people on earth'. Wilson's
book was based on the earlier work of the poet Clark Ashton Smith, and of course
his Tsathoggua (the Sleeper of N'kai) (see below), a fictional supernatural entity
in the Cthulhu Mythos, which also became popularised by The American horror writer
H. P. Lovecraft. It was Lovecraft that constantly referred to the "Great Old
Ones": a loose pantheon of 'ancient, powerful deities' from space who once
ruled the Earth and who have since fallen into a deathlike sleep. I personally don't
think so mate, they are alive and still at it!
Human Fabrication
As David Mitchell writes
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads
to cruelty."
Fabricants are butchered by machines on ships (above) an turned
into liquid food (soap) for "their own consumption", so that the clones can
continue to be born and bred in a slave reality - without question... Its the League of Gentlemen again and the 'special stuff'...
How many times has this 'theme' of human ‘food banks’ (trafficking) occurred
in one form or another in other movies? From the Matrix, Blade, to V and of
course every vampire film, etc, until we get the message? If its in the movies, then it will be 'going on' somewhere in our world in some fashion. Horse meat anyone? Also, with missing people figures in the USA alone being around 2,000 a day, never mind elsewhere, then you have to question what on Earth is happening here?
The "Machine world' from the Matrix movies (above left) and more accurately
the Archontic worlds, that are vibrational prisons created to harvest humanity's
true power - our imagination, are more real than we dare to think. This is one
of the main themes within the Cloud Atlas - oh what a surprise?
In the movies and in so called reality, what’s the difference really?
The Revelation
The conversation between Sonmi-451 and Joo Changand explains how
she has been brought out of slavery to be part of the plot to awaken the masses,
but first her eyes had to be opened so to 'see' the 'true true' as Zachry says in his language on Big Island.
Their dialogue goes:
Hae-Joo Chang: The genomics industry demands a huge quantity
of biomatter for wombtanks, but more importantly to sustain their engineered labor
force. Recycled fabricants are a cheap source of protein.
[Sonmi watches in horror with tears rolling down her face]
Sonmi-451: Soap. They feed us to ourselves.
[later in their room, Chang is curled around Sonmi's body as
they lie on their bed]
Sonmi-451: That ship...that ship must be destroyed.
Hae-Joo Chang: Yes.
Sonmi-451: The systems that built them must be turned down.
Hae-Joo Chang: Yes.
Sonmi-451: No matter if we're born in a tank or a womb, we are
all Pureblood.
Hae-Joo Chang: Yes.
Sonmi-451: We must all fight, and if necessary, die to teach
people the truth.
[she turns to look at Chang]
Hae-Joo Chang: This is what we have been waiting for.
What are we waiting for?
She decides that the system of society based on slavery and exploitation
of fabricants is intolerable, and is brought to what is suppose to be Hawaii to make a public broadcast
of her story and manifesto. The twist (now I've spoilt it for you, if you haven't
seen the movie), which is that she becomes a 'deity' for the future villagers of
Big Isalnd and elsewhere, who eventually worship for Centuries her ‘revolutionary call’
and her ‘wisdom’
Religious blueprints anyone? I can just see it. The whole of our civilisation is destroyed and a few thousand years later a small colony from Scotland called the 'Hogworti' are found worshipping Harry Potter as a 'destroyer of darkness'. Because someone found it in a book or saw the movie in a distant era...
Of course it is Meronym (Halle Berry), a member of the "Prescients",
(a society holding on to remnants of technology from before the Fall) that reveals
this when she enters the Cloud Atlas, (a communications station on Big Island),
where Sonmi-451 originally broadcast her revolutionary message to the Earth's colonies
back in 2144.
As the movie moves back and forth between different times (lives) and realities, eventually
Hae-Joo is killed in a firefight in Neo Seoul and Sonmi-451 is captured and much of
the film shows her telling her story
and its intent to the Archivist (James Darcy). She is then ceremonially executed for her crime.
It always has to end with a religious sacrificial offering when the Wachowski's
make their mark in film.
Here and Now
I have always felt that humanity is crystal like (our DNA is
crystalline) at our core and like a crystal, when held up into the ‘light, we 'project and reflect' many different 'possible paths'. We are many different faces of the same source. We are multidimensional
and we all have the power to change our reality an therefore our world. Movies like Cloud Atlas offer a glimmer of this truth when we follow our journey.
If left unchallenged, machines harvesting humans as portrayed in this and many other movies could easily became a 'reality' for the many generations to come.
We also have the power of our imagination and this movie like many other art forms
give us but an inclination of what we are truly capable of, 'now', 'in the moment', the
place where our past and future 'roles' intersect. As Mitchell writes in
the book,
“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass
are all invisible.”
As John O’Donohue wrote: “The Imagination sees through a thing to the cluster of
possibilities which shroud it.”
Until next time.
Cheers
Neil
