Sweetie took me to see Cloud Atlas on Friday. He picked the movie this time. He thought it was a sci-fi movie starring Halle Berry...score two points. I had not seen a trailer, or heard anything about the movie, but I'll go see anything with Sweetie.
We were both unprepared for this movie. I'll say I'm a bit more open-minded than he is, but even at that, I wasn't quite paying attention to the dates displayed at the beginning of each scene, until I realized we were going forward and backward in time. And we were seeing Tom Hanks playing different characters in different stories going in and out of time.
Then it became a game to spot Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, and a huge cast of people as native cliff-dwellers, Brits in the 19th - 20th centuries, 22nd century clones, 19th century slaves. Mostly no transitions once the stories got cranking. They could close a door on an ancient ship, and open it onto a city street in 1970's.
It was fascinating! And long. Almost three hours, but the time flew by for me. But what is time anyway? Are our souls in different forms, living on different planes, at different points in history...all at once?
The message to take away is that love transcends death. When we find that true love he/she will be with us again. When we touch someone else's life through kindness, the kindness reflects back on us in the next life.
I give it 4 stars out of five. Sweetie gave it one star.
PS. Don't ask me what the title means. The only reference to it I heard in the movie was the name of a symphony composed by a young man who expected to see his love again in the next life.
