.Cloud Atlas is a 2012 German Historical Drama, Romance, Mystery, Comedy, Science fiction and post-apocalyptic film written and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. It was adapted from the 2004 novel by David Mitchell. The project had difficulty securing financial support during its four-year development, but was eventually produced with a $102 million budget provided by independent sources, making Cloud Atlas one of the most expensive independent films of all time. Featuring an ensemble cast to enact the film's multiple storylines, production began in September 2011 at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany
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.
The film was pre-nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects
that had a first round of votes which resulted in 10 films. All members
of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view ten-minute
excerpts from each of the ten short-listed films on Thursday, January 3,
2013. Following the screenings, the members will vote to nominate five
of these films for final Oscar consideration.
The film consists of six interrelated and interwoven stories that take the viewer from the South Pacific in the nineteenth 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."
The six stories are:
- South Pacific Ocean, 1849. Adam Ewing, an 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 keep him hidden, then 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 young English musician who is bisexual, 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". 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 in a confrontation between them, and Frobisher flees to a hotel. There, he finishes his masterpiece and shoots himself only moments before his lover Rufus Sixsmith arrives to save 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, but is killed by hitman Bill Smoke before he can give her the report that proves it. Isaac Sachs, another employee at the power plant who seems to find her familiar, also gives her the information, but he is killed by Smoke, who 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 Dermott 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. The brother tricks him into hiding out 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.
- 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 the local Resistance, and other rebels. They reveal to her that fabricants like her are "recycled" into food for future fabricants, and hold off a brutal armed assault as she broadcasts this information to the world before her capture.
- The Hawaiian Islands on post-apocalyptic Earth (dated "106 winters after "The Fall", identified as 2321), a tribesman named Zachry lives a primitive life after most of humanity has died during "The Fall" and is plagued by visions of his people's perception of the devil, "Old Georgie", a representation of his guilt for not interfering in the murder of his brother-in-law, Adam, at the hands of the Kona Chief, leader of a tribe of vicious cannibals. He is visited by Meronym, a member of the "Prescients", the last remnants of a technologically-advanced civilization. In exchange for saving his young niece from a venomous bite, Zachry agrees to guide Meronym into the mountains in search of Cloud Atlas, an outpost station where she is able to send a message to people who have left Earth and now live on other planets. After returning, Zachry discovers the murder of his tribe at the hands of the Kona. After killing the Kona Chief and a number of his tribesmen, Zachry and his niece 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, with two moons in the night sky and Earth
visible as a pale blue dot. Meronym emerges from their home and they embrace.