My colleague and receptionist, with a background in Art History, recommend the film 'Cloud Atlas'. I bought it for Margaret this Christmas
The story is composed of 6 linked plots, using characters from different races and genders, in multiple roles and settings spanning 500 years, from mid 1850 to 2300.
Plot 1.- (1850's) A lawyer is sent to witness a contract to purchase slaves for a plantation. While at the plantation he observes the brutal beating of a slave. His eyes meet those of the slave and he faints. On the journey home he discovers the slave has stowed away in his room. He befriends him. The slave has to proves his worth by setting the ship's sail. It's touch and go, but he wins them over the captain. He latter saves the lawyer from being poisoned by a wicked quack. The lawyer and his wife become abolitionists.
Plot 2. - (1931) A young gay musician links up with a famous but creatively blocked composer, and helps him to write great music. He is compromised by the composer who realises he has a hold over the young genius. This leads to the young musician accidentally shooting the composer, but not fatally, and running off to live in oblivion. He then chooses to kill himself.
Plot 3. - A publisher gets in with the wrong crowd and is threatened for money. He goes to his brother, who being fed up with him, has him consigned to an old peoples home, which is actually a prison. With others, they eventually escape and enlist the help of enraged Scotland rugby fans to act as their army of protection.
Plot 4. - (1970's) An American journalist follows in the footsteps of her father to uncover an attempted nuclear reactor disaster, deliberately aiming to end the threat posed by the nuclear industry over that of oil. She escapes with the help of a friend of her fathers, who switches sides. He fought in Vietnam with the reporters father.
Plot 5. - (2060?) A Korean 'clone' developed to serve food in a restaurant, realises that
she can 'resist' by observing the example of a colleague. She is befriended by a soldier who is also a member of the resistance. They escape through hair-raising endeavours. She goes on to become an icon, and a goddess of the future.
Plot 6. - (2300?) A voyage arrives at an inhabited tropical island. The local people are terrorised by marauding cannibals. The voyagers want help to climb a high mountain that the locals fear. A risk filled endeavour discovers a mountain top. A inter galactic transporter is requested. Our local hero says he must stay with his family, despite its troubles. However devastation has been visited on the village while they were away, and with one surviving daughter, all depart this world for a better future in some other galaxy.
This film begins with the quack doctor digging up human teeth on a beach in the south pacific. This is an echo to the cannibals in the final film, implying circularity.
Themes
Systematic and established Abuse from a dominant power. In plot 1, slavery is the theme, the ultimate degradation of humanity against itself. The capitalistic commodification and exploitation of people for profit. This is institutional greed. The justification goes 'if we don't do it, others will, and we will loose out (and then might become the victim!)' In order to make this bearable, people are turned into animals. In plot 5 the waitress realises that the 'hope of salvation' the women are given for freedom is actually fake. The one chosen woman, offered nirvana, is actually executed, in the style of mass manufactured chicken carcasses and her body is then used to make the very food served up by the women in their cafe.
Greed
In plot 1. the quack doctor says it all. 'I like money, that's why I do it.' In plot 4, the massive oil interests from around the world attempt to destroy any threat that the nuclear industry may offer by engineering and nuclear catastrophe.
Power
In plot 2, the composer is aware of his hold over the young musician. He enjoys the power he holds over him, and knows that he holds all the cards. But he does not. He is shot by his own gun, kept in his bedside cabinet, symbolising fear. The musician is now even pray to the consiege at his Edinburgh tenement block.
Resistance and hope.
Resistance is futile. The hope that is offered is a lie. What is true love, and how does it liberate? These stories show how week and insignificant resistance to oppression is. First it is seen for what it is, and understood. Second it is resistance, third it is strongly and violently opposed. The resistor runs a fragile root, across a ship's sail, over an escape route between high rise blocks, out of a sinking car, pushed over a bridge, running away for incarceration in an old people's home in a stolen expensive car, climbing a precipitous mountain.
My thoughts
Though apparently 'godless', this film challenges the Faustian deal with the devil, and celebrates Resistance, for Resistance sake. A firework of light and power in an oppressive darkness. In a parallel with Christ, the waitress become an figure of worship for future generations. As a Christian, this is a simplistic veneration, but is touching. It does alert me to the questions raised in the reformation about naivety of 'veneration'. The waitress' words are not new but are gentle and refreshing. More Aung San Suu Kyi than Christ.
The religion depicted in the film is eastern in origin. There is an idea that the people are reincarnated from each other. There is an idea that death is a door into a different world, but this world is the worlds of this film.
I appreciate this eagle eye take on humanity. It speaks of hope staying alive, through these tenuous living moments. The film indicates this by revealing the mark of a shooting star on their body. This is like the sign of the cross. To me this is the mark of those who choose to live differently, to run against for mainstream towards the light. For me, this light is the 'light of life'.
I having been trying to think from the perspective of the whole of time, inspired by 'Sapiens' (Yuval Harari). This film projects into the future, with the similarly brief that all organised religion is no more.
It is a worthy film, raising some interesting philosophical issues, in the context of hope. I liked the use of 'spark' between people- of unforeseen connections linking people, and creating changes, some being significant.
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