Reviews: Cloud Atlas

A hiatus, to the receiver of the information, is his or her worst nightmare. To have to sit and wait for an indefinite amount of time for the next installment of their favourite show, movie, book, album, or even blog post is what I would call hell. However, what most people do not realize is that a hiatus is there for a reason, and a very important one at that. So put on your dancing shoes and practise your jigs for I shall explain it in the form of a song...

The song goes by the name of Cloud Atlas. Technically, Cloud Atlas is not a song, but a sextet, which, in this context, is a musical composition made by six people playing musical instruments. Moreso, it is a song told in the form of a whooping, three-hour long story that spans five decades, about six individuals across six different time periods, who find themselves indubitably connected by each other's decisions.

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - Pacific Islands, 1849

The begnning of this part was so boooooorng! My God! Till date I am surprised how I did not sleep through it. This is where I give the Wachowski's and Tom Twyker filming and musical credit because, I believe, they knew this part on its own (as half of it was in the book) would make people walk out of the theater before the movie rolled into its second act. This first arc is about Adam Ewing, an American lawyer who has stopped over at the Chatham Islands, awaiting his ship to be fixed. While there, he comes upon the whipping ceremony of a slave, Autua, who looks at him and sees pity in his eyes. When the ship departs, Adam falls ill and is 'cared for' by Evil Tom Hanks, who is only hellbent on getting the key to Adam's wooden chest, hoping to find some valuables inside it. Lo and behold! Autua stowed away in the ship and comes to Mr. Ewing's timely rescue, managing to return him to his home, where he and his wife unite and decide to fight against slavery in the United States.

Letters from Zedelghem - Cambridge/Edinburgh, 1936

Adam Ewing just happened to write a journal, which Robert Frobisher, a failed and penniless man, comes across while being the amanuensis (ghost writer of sorts) to an aging composer by the name of Vyvyan Ayrs (Professor Slughorn in another universe). Robert's story is slightly more intriguing since a) he tells his story in the form of letters to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, and b) it unites the first story to the next more deeply. Robert is a composer as well and hopes to use the opportunity as Vyvyan's ghost writer to find his own voice. Vyvyan tells him of a musical idea he has had from a dream, the background music from a nightmarish cafe where all the waitresses have the same face and drink soap. Later, as Robert composes his own music, Vyvyan overhears him and says that that is the music from his dream. Gasp, I know!

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery - San Francisco, 1973

As we lovers always are, we cannot go anywhere without a keepsake of our most memorable love moments, and this is what Sixsmith does. Now an old and wrinkly nuclear physicist, he carries with him the letters that Robert wrote to him, dreaming of a life that would have been. What Robert did has inspired him to come clean to Luisa Rey, a San Fransisco journalist played by Halle Berry, about the treacherous plot of a nuclear reactor catastrophe orchestrated by who we shall call his boss. But of course, Sixsmith is murdered and Luisa Rey stumbles upon the letters among other nuclear gobbledygook, and intends on solving the mystery, avenging Sixsmith's death, and (maybe) saving the world from an energy crisis similar to what Kenya is experiencing now.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - London, Present day (2012 at the time)

Timothy's ordeal takes a lighter tone different from the first three tales, and vastly different from the last two. To sum it up, Timothy accidentally commits himself into a nursing home in order to hide from some gangsters, not knowing that the nursing home is another hell on its own. The Matrix's Mr. Smith acts as the nefarious Nurse Noakes who will just not leave the poor old man alone.

An Orison of Sonmi-451 - Neo Seoul, 2144

The world is on the brink of a Third World War and the 'Fabricant' called Sonmi-451, a human cloned for slavery, is caught in the middle of it. Sonmi-451 works in the 'Nightmarish Cafe' that Vyvyan had dreamed about. She has no problem with her current life. She works well and she is fed something called 'Soap', and she gets to rebel a little bit with her best friend Yoona-939, an older and more aware Fabricant, by secretly watching the movie called The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, starring, Elderly Tom Hanks. But this perfect cocoon of normalcy falls apart when, rebelling similar to Timothy, her best friend is killed before her. After a rescue, Sonmi comes into her full awareness too and joins an extremist group, and leaves a powerful message for future generations.

Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After - Big Isle, 106 Winters after the fall (2321)

Clearly, English died, was buried, and was long forgotten during this time period. After Sonmi-451, this was my favourite story arc. Civilization has seemingly regressed to the dinosaur age, with the local communities either taking Sonmi's empowering speech as biblical texts and thus living like hermits, or plainly cannibalizing each other. Yes, it is all a beautiful but gross mess, but only until when futuristic Halle Berry comes to offer Caveman Tom Hanks (Everyone acts as everyone in this movie, which only adds to its beauty) futuristic medical expertise in exchange for being taken to a satellite tower at the mountaintops. Their journey is not only one against the elements, but also against self-sabotage, oppressive religion, inner demons, and, of course, against cannibals.

So, what does it all mean?

My favourite aspect of this movie is how you suddenly realize that main character in each time period's story is actually the same person, reincarnated in order to feel the effects of his/her past and future decisions. Cloud Atlas is an incredibly challenging movie to watch and book to read, but once you get this core theme, it all becomes so simple that you would feel stupid. Adam Ewing decides to fight against slavery, which allows Luisa Rey, a black woman in America, to become who she is. Robert Frobisher, rejected by his world, was embraced by the only person for whom he cared, which helped him compose the Cloud Atlas Sextet which ties all six stories together. Luisa Rey fights corruption, whose story influenced Timothy's escape, whose story Influenced Sonmi's rebellion, and whose story made Caveman Tom Hanks in the distant future learn to fight for what he loves. Much wow. Such beautiful.

So, back to the hiatus. It is is not hell but when we all take time to breath. Great things take time, an old sage said, and time is our most prized commodity. We don't need to always be in a rush. If we move too fast, we will get to where we are going but we will miss seeing why we wanted to go there in the first place. We will forget to live in the now, and to see just how everything is connected, as Cloud Atlas depicts. For nearly two months, I took time away from life to understand myself, and through it, connections were lost but better ones were formed, my life advanced, and I am in a much better position than I was before.

In conclusion, I was to write this review of Cloud Atlas much later in life after the first five novels of The Orisha Saga were written and published. Cloud Atlas had - and still has - a great influence on the sixth book which, prospectively, is my favourite book to ever write. You want a sneak peak? Well, instead of a single person reincarnating in different time periods, it is all about one person appearing in four different states of existence, and each with differing personalities. Her task (yes, 'her') is to bring back that which has been lost. To reconnect with those she has lost. Isn't that part of what life is all about?

I'm hyper-excited for this and I hope you are too.

Oh well, I better get back to my hiatus. Bennu won't write itself, now will it?