CLOUD ATLAS

CLOUD ATLAS. Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, directors. Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Lilly Wachowski (as Andy Wachowski); script, and producers (among five),[1] from the novel by David Mitchell; additional material by Chris Lindsay.[2] USA, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, China: Cloud Atlas Productions et al. (production) / Warner Brothers (US) et al. (distribution), 2012; see IMDb for complexities of the "et al."[3] Hugh Bateup, Uli Hanisch, production design.

Complexly "braided" plot[4] relevant here for its images in various time periods, and a nuclear power station as important for the plot (if mostly background and something of a "MacGuffin").[5]

See for ""The Wonder City of the Future" in "Neo Seoul" — a dystopian future — and for images of threatening containment in spaces with a range of technology, with the confinement stressed in their contrast to scenes of wide expanse: especially ocean, a fertile valley, looking out into a beautiful night sky.

• In the 2012 plot-line, Aurora House: comic confinement in a nursing home, with just a touch of threatening undertones of the ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST variety.[6]

• In the 1849 thread, an American lawyer is confined to his cabin on the US merchant ship that may be Prophetess,[7] or may be as a joke Old Salty Dog, which is definitely the name of one of the sailors. The physician caring for the lawyer attempts to poison him, and as part of that attempt, attempts to break in. There is clear reference to slavery, including the presence of a self-freed slave, who risks recapture and/or death. So: confinement with threats in what even in 1849 wasn't cutting-edge technology, but still a complexly-rigged sailing ship, which is technological.

• Most especially the sleep pods for "fabricants" in Neo Seoul in 2144: elongated octagons, less common but with much the same effect as the more usual SF hexagons.[8] Much of the story of Sonmi-451, a "fabricant" — apparently a vat-grown human — involves confinement in limited spaces (alternated with threatening exposure where one may fall and/or be shot). The fabricants we see are also collared with a device that can kill them (cf. and contrast collars for "risks" in DEADLOCK and Reefs of Space), and are killed in a chair, in a system that combines prisoner execution in the manner of the Stalinist NKVD with a headpiece like that of an "electric chair" with a built-in stunbolt gun set on "kill".[9] The cattle motif is continued in a quick but gruesome shot of dead fabricants — apparently all female — strung up by the heals and moved along to be processed for their protein.

• Also, one near-drowning in a sinking car, where getting out is crucial.

RDE, finishing, 20Mar22