Today I saw Cloud Atlas.
The Wachowskys and Tom Tykwer have made a very mature film from what I’m going to assume must be a very mature book, by author David Mitchell, which when the opportunity is there, I will now gladly sit down to read. So much for films doing disservice to books. Meanwhile, considering that even though in the book there are surely more narrative alleys being traveled and smoke tunnels to walk through, the filmmaking mastery at play here translates the essence of the message to the cinematic experience very handsomely.
One can see, watching this film that there’s the understanding of  a notion of the ’roundness’ of time. We are looking at time as circular. One could say, that time IS circular. (J. L. Borges believed that. This notion is throughout his writings). What, if not circular, or cyclical is it when something that was unethical once and then ethical again, then unethical, finally, it seemed, could become ethical or unethical once again beyond understanding. For if we believe ~ Cloud Atlas tells us~ that we have seen and read about everything that human beings are capable of, then we are wrong. What is it to have the feelings of a sentient being no matter how debased the origin, is what’s a stake here: the understanding of emotions through the sequential discovery of curiosity, awe, admiration, shock, trauma, fear, humilliation, love, trust, respect, outrage, challenge, risk and ultimately sacrifice, shows us what a rounded full spirit should consist of. This is is the backbone of the multi-temporal narrative that takes place in a time that feels more and more like the future of a very dystopian world. Cloud Atlas.

M.T. Rangel

Grade