Thoughts on the novel (and film) Cloud Atlas, likely chock-full of spoilers!
I may have to read it again, but the twists at the end of An Orison of Sonmi~451 and The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing both felt a little contrived.
A lot of reviews talk about An Orison of Sonmi~451 as depicting a "capitalist dystopia" but it seems a highly statist society to me.
The casting of the same person to play multiple roles in the Cloud Atlas movie is intriguing in some cases. Characters that are clearly supposed to be "versions" of each other are played by different actors in the different stories and it's not clear that characters played by the same actor are meant to be corresponding characters in the different stories either.
In the case of the former, the most obvious case is Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) and Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw)
In the case of the latter, are Vyvyan Ars and Timothy Cavendish supposed to be corresponding? Are Luisa Rey and Jocasta Ayrs?
I can buy Bill Smoke, Nurse Noakes and Old Georgie as being somewhat related figures, if not in direct correspondence.
I need to go back and read to get a better sense of the significance (or even relevance) of Isaac Sachs.
This New Yorker article on the adaptation of Cloud Atlas seems to suggest the casting of the same actor in multiple roles is supposed to convey that they are the same "soul".
In particular, it makes it perfectly clear that, at least in the film, Goose and Zachary are the same soul. I really did not pick that in the book.
Intriguing casting information I haven't read elsewhere:
In addition to Zachry and the malevolent Dr. Goose, Hanks also plays a thieving hotelier in the thirties, a nuclear scientist in the seventies, a memoir-writing thug in the present, and an actor who plays Timothy Cavendish in a movie in the twenty-second century.
I knew Zachry and Sachs from the trailer, Goose and Duster Hoggins from production stills, but not Cavendish in the "disney" nor the "thieving hotelier".
I wonder if the music playing in the trailer when Luisa hears the Cloud Atlas Sextet is actually what they play in that scene. I always thought it was a literal sextet, not a full orchestral piece.
The film did not disappoint. One of the most challenging adaptations ever done and, in my opinion, they pulled it off.
Non-book readers will initially be very confused but I think will (mostly) get the hang of it after a while :-)
In this card I said:
I may have to read it again, but the twists at the end of An Orison of Sonmi~451 and The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing both felt a little contrived.
Film Spoiler: the end of Sonmi's story was the biggest change from the book (twist removed entirely) and the twist in Ewing's story was obvious almost from the start.
Most of the makeup was stunningly done. Sometimes it was a little bit distracting (in an uncanny valley kind of way) but there were some (minor) roles I didn't even pick the actor in it was so good.
In this card I said:
I wonder if the music playing in the trailer when Luisa hears the Cloud Atlas Sextet is actually what they play in that scene. I always thought it was a literal sextet, not a full orchestral piece.
This is actually explained (somewhat) as a separate piece (although that's somewhat a goof given the sextet would have been Frobisher's last piece).
I'm still blown away that they were able to convey so much of the book in less than three hours of film.
The pacing of the editing was extremely well done.
Both Tom Hanks and Hugh Grant managed to play against type many times over in this film :-)