Cloud Atlas, or the 400-Year History of Exploitation and Rebellion

Before we move on to the article about the film, let's take a look at how the studio and the producers officially announced the concept of the film:

“A study of the effects of individuals' behavior on the lives of other individuals in the past, present and future, a murderous spirit turning into a hero, and a good deed rippling through the centuries to inspire a revolution.”

Since we are in the age of Web 3.0, let's follow its rules and state from the beginning that this article contains heavy spoilers.

When you hear the name of the Wachowski Brothers, almost everyone first remembers the Matrix. Because the Matrix is not a work that will never be remembered. Due to the behind-the-scenes footage published in our country (even all over the world) and the statements made by the directors, the film is interpreted as the embodiment of the theory by being associated with Baudrillard's Simulation Theory. Undoubtedly, this is a questionable debate. Likewise, the 2012 film "Cloud Atlas" by the Wachowskis, which is not discussed much in our country, is the version of the exploitation system of capitalism and turned into a film by taking into account the important moments of history. Although the film seems to criticize the concepts such as 'slavery', 'the Holocaust', 'exploitation', and 'class', it is ultimately directed towards a human critique rather than a system critique at the discourse level.

All this history was written by an important writer before it was reflected in a pellicle. Adapted from David Mitchell's novel of the same name, the film remains faithful to the work in terms of the stories told, but the transition between the stories in the film is constantly parallel to the one in the novel.

The 6 stories told in the movie were intertwined and this situation gained meaning when the same actors played different characters in different stories. The film, which begins by telling the story of a lawyer in 1849, when slavery was still valid, drags the audience to think about the concept of "rebellion" in all 6 stories. Because all stories are actually stories of rebellion. While the first story is about a revolt against exploitation, the second story is a revolt against homosexuality and art being in the hands of a certain group.

However, the most prominent among all these stories; It is the story of the clone Sonmi-451, set in 2144 in Neo Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. Science that emerged with the Enlightenment for the 'progress' of humanity and capitalism, which went hand in hand with it, has brought humanity to such a cruel point that the clones produced by technology serve people and as a result of this service, they think they have gained their 'freedom', while they are saponified and become the food of other clones. . In this atmosphere where capitalism is entirely based on consumption, a revolutionary movement known as the 'union' makes the clone Sonmi-451 aware of this bloodsucking system and mediates it to contribute to this rebellion process.

Just as Fahrenheit 451 is the representation of the heat at which book paper begins to burn, as Ray Bradbury states in his novel, Sonmi-451 is the representation of a "subject of rebellion" that ignites the fire of revolution.

This whole process is conveyed by constantly emphasizing some conceptual cycles in the stories told. In all 6 stories, the rebellious and benevolent characters have the same birthmark (comet). However, as the Wachowskis constantly remind throughout the film, human nature has always contained good and evil since the first moment of history.

This is sometimes embodied in the spirit of a composer in 1930s Cambridge, and sometimes in the spirit of the journalist who sided with the public in the nuclear energy debates of the 1970s.

In other words, the film tries to look at some concepts that have existed from the history of humanity to this day, from its own perspective, with 6 different stories it tells. For example, the concept of power is one of the concepts that constitute the main motifs of the film. From the first story to the last story, the reason for the violence of the strong and the bad against the weak and good is connected to God with a metaphysical reference. God has set a principle that explains human relations in this world: “The weak become flesh. It becomes food for the strong.” However, as the movie shows, history is full of people who do not act on this principle. These people trigger some future good deeds with some good deeds in the past and affect other people's lives. The film distinguishes these characters from other characters with their birthmarks on their bodies by referring to reincarnation. Because the characters with birthmarks serve the good in the last instance and oppose the divine order of the universe that will continue from the past to the future.

In this sense, the film tells 6 different stories; With concepts such as belief, fear and love, he emphasizes that the truth of the whole universe is in an eternal reality, and besides, we are in a cosmic unity in a temporal sense. While doing this, he works not only through reincarnation, but also by referring to the theory of relativity attributed to Einstein and parallel universes, through people who are very similar to each other and the same mistakes made by those people.

However, in the last instance, the film claims that the relationship of man with the whole universe has never changed. In the third story, journalist Luisa Rey's statement that "even though time progresses and the universe changes, they always make the same mistake" is an expression of pessimism. The movie is full of examples of this. For example, in the story set in Neo Seoul, people are separated into pure race and artificial beings, and the clones are burned in ovens to become food for the newly produced clones. Thus, in 2144, it cannot be said that humanity is far from Germany in the 1940s. Again, there is only a difference in form between the slavery shown in 1849 and the slavery shown in 2144. The old slavery has disappeared but has been replaced by a much more brutal and modern slavery.

At this point, the discourse of the film; It can be interpreted as "people have not made any progress despite the passage of 250 years and have constantly returned to where they were". Therefore, humanity has established magnificent civilizations, as Meronmy said in the last story, but while doing this, they went much further back with practices that could not prevent their insatiable feelings and change or even destroy nature and the world they live in. The dystopian atmosphere depicted in the city of Neo Seoul is the best indicator of this.

However, the movie; In the last story, he moves away from the discourse of people who make the same mistakes over and over, and shifts to a more positive discourse: Zachry listened to Meronmy and was convinced and changed himself. In this sense, Zachry breaks the historical cycle and starts a new cycle. Because this new cycle reveals a utopia in which a perfect system in which humanity started to re-establish civilizations can last forever.