"Cloud Atlas" production notes [PDF] - VisualHollywood

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CLOUD ATLAS (2012) PRODUCTION NOTES Representing the repressors in this society are Hugh Grant as smarmy Seer Rhee, the restaurant manager who extends his authority after hours, and Hugo Weaving as Boardman Mephi, bureaucratic upholder of the status quo. Halle Berry and Susan Sarandon take on the male roles of Ovid, a doctor who removes Sonmi's restricting collar, and Yusouf Suleiman, a scientist who champions the fabricants' rights, while Keith David leads the resistance movement as An-Kor Apis. Tom Hanks appears as an actor in a movie depiction of the publisher Cavendish's life, which inspires Sonmi, Jim Broadbent appears as a Korean musician, and James D'Arcy is the government Archivist tasked with recording her confession. After the Fall, 2321 and 2346, Hawaii Hanks last appears as the damaged but fundamentally decent goatherd Zachry, one of a peaceful tribe that survived a planetary cataclysm that plunged most of humanity into a primitive way of life. Among the remnants of their cultural past is an image of Sonmi, who has taken on goddess stature, and whose words are cited by Susan Sarandon, playing the village Abbess. For this world, author Mitchell reached into the future for an imagined dialect in the form of an unadorned, shorthand communication. The directors retained this language and worked with the cast in a Los Angeles recording studio prior to shooting, to ensure it would translate on screen. "We settled on a language that was simply stripped-down English, using minimal words to convey feelings," states Halle Berry, who appears in the segment as Meronym, an emissary of an advanced human community called Prescients. Adopting the pidgin dialect to gain his trust, Meronym seeks Zachry's aid to locate something she desperately needs. But to help her, Zachry must not only put his life at risk and deny everything he believes in, but quell the doubts inside that speak to him through the taunting voice of Hugo Weaving's character, Old Georgie. Xun Zhou appears as Zachry's sister, Rose, Jim Sturgess as his brother-in-law, Adam, and Ben Whishaw as a fellow tribesman. Hugh Grant takes his most spectacularly evil turn as the Kona Chief, leader of a marauding band of cannibal warriors, while Keith David, David Gyasi and Jim Broadbent are counted among the enlightened Prescients. Addressing how the life cycle of his roles reaches its nadir here, Grant observes, "Clearly the potential is there for souls to improve—and some do, dramatically, but some don't. They never get better. They get worse. It all comes down to free will and the choices we make." THE LONG VIEW "I think I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet I feel like something very important has happened to me." – Isaac Sachs, 1973 As the consequences of such choices play out through eternity, individual character arcs expand into the larger arcs that define a life. "I start out as a native woman who has little power, then Jocasta, who is really a shell of a person, with no voice," says Berry. "Then there's Luisa Rey, who's struggling hard to find her voice and her strength. I have a moment in the Cavendish story as a mysterious party guest, and we don't know much about her other than her confident air, but in the next life I portray a doctor, Ovid, working on the right side of the moral balance, so that by the time we arrive at Meronym you see in her the © 2012 Warner Bros. Pictures 12
CLOUD ATLAS (2012) PRODUCTION NOTES culmination of this journey and why she's so strong." Similarly, Keith David's characters run the gamut from slave to leader. And when Jim Sturgess appears as Ewing he makes his decisions instinctively as a man beginning to comprehend the meaning of justice, but those ideas are more precisely formed by the time that soul has evolved into the freedom fighter Chang, as "<strong>Cloud</strong> Atlas" acknowledges humanity's endless and universal yearning for self-determination. "If all my roles were to have a theme, it would be about working within institutions they don't like and wish they could change," states James D'Arcy, whose characters include those employed by a corrupt power company, a horrible nursing home and a repressive government. "But my last incarnation is the Archivist, and even though he's technically part of the oppression he finally takes a stand, so there's hope for that soul." Because of the way the filmmakers deconstructed the novel for the screen, Andy Wachowski says, "You see a moment where Autua is in danger of being shot as he hangs from the ship's rigging, and then a similar point where Sonmi is nearly killed while breaking out of prison. If you were to sandwich these moments on top of each other you see the similarities and the turning points." "I lost count of the number of ways the directors made one scene fit with the next, a thousand miles or several centuries away," adds David Mitchell. "It may be a visual link, or a single word, or in the architecture, or an actor's face. But the effect is that of a single, ingenious mosaic, glinting across time." Offering another example where Chang fires a weapon at his pursuers during a chase with Sonmi above the Neo Seoul skyline, the author says, "The scene ends with a glass wall, cracking, and the next begins with a crack spreading across the windscreen of Luisa Rey's VW, as it plunges under the waters of San Francisco Bay." Ricocheting through time also alters the concept of loss. When lovers are torn apart in one era, Tykwer <strong>notes</strong>, "We have the possibility of cutting to the same actors meeting again, bringing a happy ending to a moment that seemingly ended in heartbreak." Meanwhile, running throughout the story is the idea of creative expression, and of leaving behind what Tykwer calls "a legacy, in the form of art that will then serve to influence someone else." The chronicle of Adam Ewing's 1849 sea voyage becomes a published journal that Frobisher reads in 1936. Frobisher's letters subsequently fall into the hands of Luisa Rey in 1973, and Luisa's story about the plot at the nuclear power plant then becomes the manuscript of a book, submitted to publisher Cavendish. Cavendish's modern-day adventure becomes the subject of a film that Sonmi watches in 2144, and Sonmi's declaration of freedom is repeated and remembered until, even in a society that has lost its books and technology, her catechism is revered by Zachry and his tribe into the 24th century. Similarly, power and powerlessness recur as one of mankind's most persistent conflicts. Hanks' basest character, 1849's Dr. Goose, justifies his thievery and disregard for human life early on by declaring, "The weak are meat, the strong do eat," and, lifetimes later, his soul still grapples with that concept—as do others, from both sides of the equation. But while some people never learn, others make huge strides, a joyful course perhaps most apparent in Hanks' full range of characterizations, from the vile Goose through to Zachry. Still, vestiges of the past remain. © 2012 Warner Bros. Pictures 13
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"Cloud Atlas" production notes [PDF] - VisualHollywood

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