American lawyer Adam Ewing is returning home on a ship when, at a farewell party, the term "natural law" is first used to refer to the justification of the enslavement of blacks by whites. During the voyage, Ewing saved a black man and was later saved by a black man. When Ewing returned home, he told his father-in-law, who was an American slave owner, that he wanted to join the abolitionist movement. His father-in-law re-emphasized the "laws of nature" and told him that a drop of water cannot move the sea. Ewing replies that without a drop of water, there would be no ocean.
ANALYSIS: Slavery and freedom are two themes that have always been present in Wachowski's films, in "The Matrix," in "V for Vendetta," and in "Cloud Atlas," where the themes of slavery and struggle are present in the stories of each era. In Cloud Atlas, the times change, the forms of slavery change, but the nature of slavery never changes, the evils of slavery that occur because of human greed and laziness never change. From the white man's forced enslavement of the inferior race, to the capitalist society's commercial enslavement of the mediocre, and finally to the future enslavement of androids through technology. There are two references to "natural law" in this story, one at the beginning and one at the end of the movie. It implies that slavery is the essence of human biology, but the theme of Cloud Atlas is very bright, in every era of slavery, there are idealists who stand up to resist and become the hope of mankind, and the parallel montage at the end of the movie across time and space and across history expresses the theme of slavery and resistance, which is very touching and deep-rooted. The Wachowski siblings should be the extreme leftists in American cinema, and both Speed and V have a very clear anarchist ideology, and his movies often have a strong anti-capitalist and anti-white bias. Which we'll see later.
The second story: 1931
The young Robert Frobisher and Rufus Sixsmith were a gay couple; Frobisher was a young musician and Sixsmith studied physics. After the two men separate, Frobisher is hired by an older musician, who writes to Sixsmith about his experiences; he reads Ewing's voyage diary and composes the Cloud Atlas Sextet, but is blackmailed by the older musician, and Frobisher is outraged and kills the older musician, ultimately drinking himself to death after completing the work.
ANALYSIS: Note that in the first scene, where Frobisher and Sixsmith appear in bed, Frobisher has a birthmark of a comet on his back, a symbol that is used throughout the movie, and which later appears on Louisa Rae, a female reporter in the third story, on the head of the Prophetess in the sixth story, and on the back of the head of the character played by Tom Hanks at the end. In the penultimate story of Cloud Atlas, the movie speaks of the Buddhist idea of reincarnation through the mouth of Hoshimi, and the movie tries to show, from the beginning, that there is an eternal connection between all things in time and space. The extremely complex editing in the movie's six stories is not as simple as just showing off, but each edit suggests the relationship between characters in different times and spaces, ultimately forming a kind of Buddhist reincarnation philosophical system. That's why the Wachowski siblings would say that Chinese people can understand this movie more easily than Westerners.
The third story: 1973
Louisa Ray, a female reporter, meets the already elderly Rufus Sixsmith, who is subsequently killed as a physicist, and Ray thus investigates the nuclear power plant project in which Sixsmith was involved, gets help from Isaac Sachs and Joe Napier, and finds out that the oil company has hired a murderer intending for the nuclear power plant to explode in order to make the himself cage the truth about the energy industry, Sicosmith's niece gives her father's report and Frobisher's letter to Ray, who writes the book Half-Life.
Analysis: in the fifth story, human civilization develops to the highest peak, but in the last story it is delivered that human civilization is destroyed by the doomsday catastrophe, according to the film's performance, there are several possibilities for this catastrophe, one is the global warming caused by the Great Flood, the second is the Clone Revolutionary War, and the third that is, it may be related to the nuclear energy in this story.
Another important theme of "Cloud Atlas" is "choice," and many of the characters in the movie make choices that determine their lives and even the future of history and humanity. Adam Ewing chooses to save a black sailor, and ultimately is saved by a black man. Many characters in this one story are also faced with choices. Choices are made throughout the movie.
Also, the image of the killer driving his car into Ray, only to be hit by Napier's car, which crashes through a column of water, looks a lot like the classic car crash at the end of Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film, "Poor Street," in any case, so maybe it's a small homage.
Fourth story: early 21st century
Publisher Timothy Cavendish, hunted down by the mob, fixed up by his brother, locked up in a nursing home, and ultimately managing to escape, writes a grossly glorified autobiography of his struggles with the nursing home system, boasting of Solzhenitsyn. The book was later made into a movie and heavily influenced history.
ANALYSIS: Hugo Weaving plays six different villains and defenders of the system in each of the six stories as: a slave owner, an art dealer, a corporate assassin, a would-be cop, and a devil. And it is the character in this episode who is the most interesting, a swarthy nurse whose story of fixing a writer cannot help but be reminiscent of "Ten Days of Peril". The connection between this story and the previous one is that Cavendish read Ray's book. And it can't be ironic that a second-rate movie adaptation of such a second-rate story influenced the course of human history. Moby Dick, mentioned in the publisher's mouth, is the Wachowski siblings' favorite book.
Fifth story: 2144
In the 22nd century, Youngna, a clone who works as a waitress, learns to rebel when she sees the movie Cavendish and is killed by the store owner. Young Na's co-worker, Hoshimi, is rescued by Resistance Colonel Hae-Ju Chang, Hoshimi joins the Resistance after learning the truth, they seize the launch center and send out the truth about humanity's enslavement of clones to the world and the extraterrestrial colonies, they are then attacked by the police force, all of the Resistance troops are killed in battle, and Hoshimi, who delivers the revelation proclamation, is put to death after she tells the archivist the full story.
ANALYSIS: This is the most important of the film's six stories, and the one with the strongest Wachowski style. Yuna is immortalized as the first clone to rebel against humanity, a phrase that appeared in The Matrix Animated's The Second Revival, except that while it was the AI artificial intelligence that rose up in rebellion then, it is the human clones that are enslaved in this story, and the humans use clones in a way that is very similar to the way that the machines enslaved the humans in The Matrix, with the clones being grown up and then divided up into various types of labor. For example, Yuna and Hoshimi are female waitresses who provide food and sexual services to humans, and after twelve years of service they are sent to "Paradise", where they are actually dismantled after they age and use their body nutrients to cultivate and feed the other clones. The first and second laws mentioned by Hoshimi are obviously the incarnation of Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics", a kind of slavery law.
Jang Hae-ju's search for Hoshimi to become the savior of the clones is clearly similar to Neo's role in The Matrix, while the black general who receives Hoshimi is the equivalent of Morpheus, and Hoshimi is faced with a choice when she is rescued. As mentioned earlier, Wachowski's films have a strong anti-white bias, as in The Matrix where the people muddling through the Matrix are all white, and the ones who escape to Zion are all people of color. This is still true of Cloud Atlas, which probably has something to do with the Wachowski siblings' love of Eastern culture.
There are many intriguing details in the story of this episode. For example, after Zhang Haizhu rescues Xingmei, he receives her into a house, which is apparently an empty, four-walled house in a slum area, but the four walls can be cybernated to create a fantasy-flavored mansion with floor-to-ceiling window views. This tendency is already evident now: all prices are going up, and the only commodity that is going down instead of up is electronics (think of how much computers have fallen in the last decade or so, and how they've gone from being a national treasure to a household appliance in the intervening decades). In the future, the only thing poor people will be able to own may be high-tech electronics.
In Jang Hae-ju's room, Hoshimi once again saw the full movie clip Young Na had shown her: 'Cavendish'. For the first time, she was baptized with revolutionary ideas.
In this era, the clones' expressions were very dull and simple, probably set to only a few simple emotions. For example, waitresses only need a few expressions to please their customers, while Hoshimi's other emotions were slowly awakened later. From this point of view, it is possible that the archivist who records Hoshimi is also a clone, which is why he is so shocked by Hoshimi's last line, "Didn't you already believe that?", and similarly, Hugo Weaving's stiff-lipped future policeman may also be a clone. Similarly, Hugo Weaving's stony-faced future policeman could be a clone, and the woman who tortures the cloned waitresses is so expressive that she could be human. Humans may have created clones of various professions to serve humanity in different fields. However, the humans who are used to being the masters, as depicted in the original "Planet of the Apes", will soon be in big trouble.
The Matrix is a remake of the Bible, with Neo's hands stretched out flat at the end to access MATRIX sacrificing himself for peace, the equivalent of Yeshua going to the cross. And the death of Hoshimi at the end is equivalent to this martyrdom. Hoshimi's death was a failure on the surface, but it sowed the seed of faith. In the future, this seed will grow into a great tree.
The sixth story: the post-apocalyptic era without a specific chronology
After an unknown number of years, mankind has declined back to the primitive era for some reason, and the law of the jungle is in control of human society, but a group of survivors of a high-tech civilization exists and is treated as a prophet. Zachary the shepherd overcomes the demons in his heart, saves the prophetess, and leaves the planet in a spaceship with the prophets.
ANALYSIS: In the previous story, Hoshimi was executed by the state apparatus, but apparently under her guidance, the revolution was ultimately successful and Hoshimi's quotes became the new Bible. When people of this era expressed their amazement they would say, "O Hoshimi!" The Western equivalent today would be, "Oh my god" or "Jesus Christ." (Doubtful this is a joke in the US.) And the "spiritual mountain" where Hoshiomi made her final proclamation has become a place as holy as Jerusalem for generations to come. The Devil, played not as a character but as a symbol of human superstition and anti-civilization by Hugo Weaving, who forces Zachary to kill the Prophet, is reminiscent of the destructive suppression of Western civilization by the Christian Church in the Middle Ages.
Conclusion: "Cloud Atlas" is a real science fiction movie, although the movie only the last two stories take place in the future, but it is important to know that the essence of science fiction is not science, but the change of science on human society, magnificent science fiction epics, often with a huge time span, such as the "2001 Space Odyssey" from the age of the apes all the way to the change of the human life form. Hyperion, which is very similar in form to Cloud Atlas, also explores the fate of humanity through the stories of several different people. The movie concludes with a look at the distant Earth from other planets, like the stargazers of antiquity. Of course, this may be the reason why Cloud Atlas has been criticized: it is too ambitious and lacks the sincerity to serve the people. But there's no doubt that this film will be another one of those buzz-worthy (and probably polarizing) movies that will consume countless brain cells after "The Grandmaster," and for that reason alone, I also think it's extremely rewarding. And for many people, I believe that they will get more out of this movie than a mind game.