`Cloud Atlas (2) The Moving Score

The score for `Cloud Atlas was composed by Tom Twyker, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, and their End Title piece found me reeling stunned from the three-hour film.  The film ends on a peaceful note, as the aged Zachry (Grampy) tells stories to his grandchildren one starry night in a planet far from Earth.  The aged Meronym (Grammy) calls them all into the house, and they walk in together after a kiss that marks centuries of life together.  

I am most intrigued by the Cloud Atlas Sextet that Robert Frobisher (Ben Wishaw) composes while serving as amanuensis to the famous composer Vyvyan Ars (Jim Broadbent).  I found the orchestral version of this piece on Google Play - Cloud Atlas: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, but I love how this composition grew out of an intimate though tempestuous relationship between the two.

Then, from 1936 Cambridge to 1972 San Francisco, we find Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) looking for the Could Atlas Sextet in an old record shop.  Lo and behold the store clerk (Wishaw, once again) happens to be playing that very piece on the stereo.  He cannot seem to stop listening to it.  She finds it very beautiful.  Which of course it is.

`Cloud Atlas (1) The Extraordinary Acting

`Cloud Atlas: a breathtaking epic, a tour de force of a film... Watch it, if you haven't yet!

I caught wind of `Cloud Atlas sometime last year, and even posted about it on social media.  I must've seen just a trailer, and read a synopsis, and there was something about the film that was truly epic.  I am so enthralled, that I've now watched it a few times in the past two weeks.  I borrowed the novel from the library, authored by the obviously brilliant David Mitchell, poised to be read.  

There is a lot to speak to, but let me focus on three - (1) the acting, (2) the score, and (3) the philosophy - for this week's articles.

For Tom Hanks, Halle Berry & Co., this must've been a load of fun to act in.  They had a chance to spread their acting wings, and take on multiple characters in one tapestry of a film.  Drawing on the same actors was not only economical and efficient, I imagine, but also imperative to weave the disparate story lines together.  

Two story lines in particular speak to the differing nature of their characters' romance.  Berry is Luisa Rey, and Hanks is Isaac Sachs, in 1973 San Francisco.  She is a journalist investigating a tip from a nuclear physicist about a big oil companies' conspiracy to trigger a catastrophic accident.  He runs into her, as she is snooping for records in an office, but apparently he is taken by her from the get-go and immediately decides to cover for her.  They only have a handful of scenes together, before he is killed off.  But in a balcony scene, she asks him why he did what he did, and he couldn't quite articulate the reasons.  Later on, though, in a voice over, he admits to having fallen in love with her.  

While this was a romance that was sudden and unconsummated, they as Zachry and Meronym, on the Big Isle, 106 winters after the Fall (circa 2250), have a slowly developing romance that culminates in their having a large family well into the future.  Their relationship was forged from tragedy and horror and from the intimacy that come from an interplanetary journey.  Their romance is a natural outcrop, if you will, of what they encounter in their lives, and it is magnificent acting on their part to portray the human complexity of these events for both of them.  In a way, Zachry and Meronym consummate what Sachs and Rey did not three centuries before.

Clever + Desire in `Occupied

I relish how clever this lady is.  I travel frequently, but have no need or desire to do anything that she does.  Still, as a matter of intellectual curiosity, I wonder how possible it is to pass through security with everything she stows away on her body and clothing.  Moreover, I do not smoke, so it strikes me as nonsense to go through such lengths just for a smoke.  But I can imagine how much of a need and desire some people do have for certain things.  For this lady, there is a distinct look of such pleasure, even satiation, from smoking that it is like oxygen after a period of depletion from some kind of track sprint.

Napoleon in `Girl with the Yellow Stockings

A young couple lounges in bed, and he asks her to marry him.  Her answer is no, at first.  Their ensuing sexual play never crosses into sex, and their relationship flirts at the boundaries of rough love.  In short order, we glimpse the nature of their love.

Apparently their relationship has an undercurrent of tension, that on the one hand is feisty and on the other hand is aggressive.  There is evidently love there, though it's not always easy to figure it out or to locate it.  But I think the key is her reference to Napoleon halfway through the film.  She wants him to win her love, or specifically her hand in marriage, patiently and faithfully.  In the process, she will evidently keep rejecting him, rebuffing him, and toying with him.  All as tests of true and enduring love, which may be more common among young couples than we can imagine.

`...And She Was My Eve, by Jamie Foxx

"...And She Was My Eve" is about a man scarred early in life by unrequited love who works to attain the perfect mate. An intrusive neighbor questions his mysterious lifestyle and the uncertainty of the outside world brings his dreams to a halt. In the end, he may get more then he bargains for.

Actor Jamie Foxx tries his hand at directing - for Project Imaginat10n, a collaboration between Ron Howard and Canon.  Eva Longoria, Georgina Chapman, Biz Stone and other figures join him, too.

Foxx revisits Mary Shelley's `Frankenstein in his short film, that is more comedic than horrific. Here is Kenneth Branagh's 1994 rendition, in its glorious romance and horror.

`Frankenstein began as a dream - a nightmare, apparently - and was prompted by a writing competition among Mary Shelley and her clique. 

It Reminded me of `Color of Night

Color of Night

The film that this photograph - Smoke, by Anton Komlev - on my Google+ Timeline reminded me of.  I was a psychology professor, and one of my students recommended it as a way to illustrate and illuminate the personality disorders we were studying.  I'm glad I viewed the film first, as it was indeed a superb psychological study and also an erotic thriller.

It Reminded me of `Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The film that this illustration on my Google+ Timeline reminded me of.  No. 3 on my all-time Top 5 favorite films, with an enthralling, tour de force performance by Rooney Mara.

It Reminded me of `Scent of a Women

Scent of a Woman

The film that this GIF on my Google+ Timeline reminded me of.  Al Pacino won the Oscar for Best Actor in a film that was superb not only for his acting, but also for its plot, pathos and script.

Sins of London Triptych (3) The Man in the Road

A short story about hope, death and the desperate need for redemption.

What came to mind first was `Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett.

Then, from one comment, I wondered about Franz Kafka.

At the finish of it, I thought about Henry David Thoreau, from `Walden:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

After Ashley's runs off to find out exactly where they are, the camera moves from one segment of London to another.  It is all desolate, and what we hear is only industrial hum.  It is terrible not to know where they are.  But that's part of the theme.  The three - Ashley, Beth and Ray - are desperately lost and they are a disparate trio: fit and drunken, Christian and atheist, men and woman.  Yet, it is Cale's death that galvanizes them into prayer finally.

So this short firm doesn't just have existential overtones, but frank Christian redemption.

Sins of London Triptych (2) The Connoisseurs

Con-nois-seur (n.): a person of refined sensibility and discriminating taste; one who professes to know about such matters.

Letty and her Austrian husband Dieter are into swinging.  While he may be reserved, she is openly flirtatious and sensuous.  Their visiting friends are a contrast in their own right: Roni reveling vicariously in the first couple's lifestyle and Frank being a bit of an awkward boor.  Frank repels Letty's entreaties to dance, but Roni accepts.  As the ladies dance in erotic turns, he is awkwardly immobilized into holding three wine glasses - theirs and his.

While lust is the obvious (deadly) sin, greed sidles in at the end, as Frank is girded to hard-bargain on the sale of Letty's and Dieter's house.  Sensuality shifts to practical gamesmanship, as awkwardness becomes preparedness for a battle of a sort.