Moroni's Review of "Cloud Atlas"

Early Mormon apostle Orson Hyde once asked, in prayer, to be shown the meaning of time and eternity.  He was shown in a dream a great cloud that he was told represented eternity.  There was a stream that flowed out of the cloud, arced around, and fed back into the cloud.  He was told that the stream represented time.

I have contemplated this dream quite often, trying to divine a meaning in it.  The cloud representing eternity is enormous, amorphous, even chaotic.  And what we call time is finite, follows its own course, but eventually ends, returning to the wellspring that spawned it.  I have many, many theories about time and space and eternity that would either sound crazy to people, or like a really great science fiction movie.

Personally, I think that Orson Hyde was onto something.  I think that the mystics of the East have also come close to understanding the substance of time and space.  I remember reading about an Eastern teacher trying to teach his student about time.  He cast a twig into a river and said that the twig represents our lives, and the river represents time.  The twig floating with the current is symbolic of our lives flowing along through time.  From the perspective of the twig, where is the river?  It is only where the twig is.

But then the teacher explained, "Where is the river?  Is it at the source?  Is it at each bend and turn?  Or is it where it feeds into the sea?"

The answer is - the river is everywhere at once.  So it is with time.  From our perception, time is linear and appears to flow with continuity from one moment to to the next.  But that is an illusion.  Like the river, time exists everywhere at once.  As a great, eternal cloud, as it were.

So when I walked out of "Cloud Atlas", I told my wife Martha, "This is either the worst movie I have ever seen, or it is the best movie I have ever seen.  I can't decide which.  I may have to see it another time to decide."

I went home and slept on it and decided that "Cloud Atlas" is indeed one of the best movies that I have ever seen,

I figured out why so many people don't like it.  It is very nonlinear.  The plot bounces us back and forth through time.  There are several distinct story lines - one in the mid 1800's, one in the 1930s, another in the 1970s, an episode in the modern day, another 150 years in the future, and a final one hundreds of years in the future.  The movie moves seamlessly between the time periods.  The editing techniques used to mesh these narratives together was nothing short of breathtaking.

In other words, there is not much in the way of conventional continuity in the narrative.  But that is the point.  Every story is happening at once, at the same time.

This movie is not for the dumbed-down masses.  It isn't sufficient to sit back and be entertained.  In order to understand the movie, it is required that the viewer think for the entire duration of the movie.  I think that's why people don't like it.  They have to think.

Before this movie came out, I knew nothing about it, except that it is directed by the Wachowski Brothers (er, brother and sister), along with Tom Tykwer.  I am a huge fan of the Wachowski siblings.  Of course, I loved "The Matrix".  Like "Cloud Atlas", I knew nothing about "The Matrix" when I walked in to see it and was completely wowed.  I loved "V For Vendetta", that anthem of libertarianism, and I even loved "Speed Racer".  So it was a given that I would go see this movie.

It is unique in many ways.  There is a superb ensemble of a cast (Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, and others), and the genius is that each of these actors play a different character in each of the different timelines.  Each performer was able to display their acting prowess in the animation of very different characters.  Sometimes, they even played someone of a different ethnicity.  A black actor would play a white person.  A white person would play an Asian.  It was really ingenious.

There were hints of reincarnation, which traditionally is not a Mormon belief (but does have its argument in the doctrine of Multiple Mortal Probations).  So it is interesting fodder for thought.

And that is the genius of this movie - it makes you think.

It doesn't hurt that it is visually stunning.  For me, this is more than just a movie.  It is art.  This is what the movie experience should be about.

I never did go see it again.  I have to wait until it comes out on video.  Or just realize that, if all time exists at once, I am watching it right now.