At the beginning of the year I posted the video on Tom Hanks with James Corden doing all of Tom Hanks' movies. When we got to Cloud Atlas Mr. Corden started to say that it was a hard movie to follow and Mr. Hanks said it needed repeat viewing. This made me very excited and very nervous at the same time.
This movie, to be put as simply as possible, is about 6 different stories, in different times in history, and how the touch and shape the lives of the other stories as they go on.
That is really the best way I can explain this movie without telling everything that happens. This movie is like the movie Inception in the fact that if you are not paying attention 100% of the time you get confused, lost, and basically have no idea what is going on and have to start the film all over again.
What makes this film unique is how the story is told. You would think that saying 6 different stories over 500 years time you will go through them in chronological order and see how they all connected. They didn't do that for this film. All of the stories where told at the same time. Which was astonishingly beautiful. The writers and the editors were somehow able to give all the stories enough detail to be told. They were able to have all of the stories hit sad moments and suspenseful moments at the same time. Doing this allowed you to move fluidly between all of the stories without having to change emotional gears.
What was also very impressive about this story is that there are about 10ish people in the whole film. Almost every actor that stars in this film end up in every story playing a different character. Mr. Hanks himself plays 6 roles and he is NOT the same person in all of them. Sometime he is the bad guy, sometime the good, sometime he is the story, others he is a small but pivotal role. This is a fantastic movie for all of the actors in the film to really show off their acting skills. You would think that would be something that would distracted you the whole movie but it really doesn't. How the whole movie is designed leaves me in awe. They could have just done one scene wrong, or line wrong, or one anything wrong and it would have totally thrown everything off track up it truly didn't. This is a film that really could have gotten away from the actors, the directors, editors, costumes, but nothing did. They kept it straight all the way though and kept it enjoyable.
What I really love about this movie is that I watched it 24 hours ago and I am still thinking about it like I am still watching the film. There is so much depth in this movie that Mr. Hanks is right, it does need repeat viewing. I just loved how it shows that something anyone does today, can cause a ripple effect through time. That someone who wrote a biography inspired someone hundreds of year later to write a song, who inspires someone to keep going, to inspire someone else to speak the truth that keeps going to convince someone else to start again. I don't think many of us think that simple things in our lives can touch so many people and cause such a big change. Right now I don't think anyone is really interested in what I have to say about movies, or about anything but I don't know really. Maybe someone years from now will come across this blog and like it enough to try something of their own. Or my great great grandchildren will want to know more about me and happen to find this online and get a look inside my head for a little while.
This movie shows that all of our lives intertwine in such a way we will never fully be able to comprehend. I think that is one of the most beautiful things about life itself.
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