Sunday, November 4, 2012

Can Someone Splain Cloud Atlas Plz?

Okay, so I went to see Cloud Atlas, and I don't think I got it.  I have friends who have been all gushy gushy about how great it was and all I could think was, "I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from that.  What's the point?"  So could someone please explain it to me?  I consider myself a pretty smart cookie and I'm a very attentive movie-goer - I tend to pick up on visual hints and foreshadowing and whatnot - but I just could not figure out what message I was supposed to be receiving from Cloud Atlas.

**Warning: Spoilers, but not very coherent ones, because I just didn't get it...**

If it's about how our actions in one life carry over into the next (karma, reincarnation) then I need someone to explain the causality between the story lines, because I didn't see it.  Why was the Tom Hanks storyline so all over the place, with the only apparent connection between his characters being the fact that they were all played by Tom Hanks, while the Jim Sturgis characters were all exactly the same from one life to the next?  Was the Hugo Weaving character even supposed to be a person?  Because he seemed to be this caricature of evil rather than an actual human soul.  Did the composer who committed suicide ever come back into the later storylines?  Because I didn't see him (though sometimes they were hard to pick out).  So is the message, don't take your own life because then you won't get another one?

The movie was interesting but not satisfying.  So could someone please satisfy my curiosity and tell me what the hell all that meant?

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