In his novel The Idiot, Dostoevsky made the ambiguous statement; “beauty will save the world”.
The quote puzzled many in the decades that followed, including novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
who, in his Nobel Lecture in 1970, replied;
“What sort of a statement is that?
For a long time I considered it mere words.
How could that be possible?
When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything?
Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?”
This, I believe, is the question that lies at the heart of Cloud Atlas,
directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski’s, and based on the book by David Mitchell.
Cloud Atlas tells six different stories, separated by time and genre,
and yet, connected by a seemingly thin thread of fate and coincidence as the main characters of each story
find inspiration in the stories that preceded theirs to ultimately change their own in a meaningful way.
In many ways; it’s a story about stories;
about the peculiar way in which we can convey a life experience from one individual to another;
from one generation to the next.
We do this through diaries, letters, literature, films, and in more abstract ways through religion and mythology.
Solzhenitsyn, who is referenced in the film more than once, uses the overarching term ‘art’
to capture what he sees as “the only substitute for an experience we ourselves have never lived through,”
and it is here that he found the essence of Dostoevsky’s world-saving beauty
and came to understand it not as “a careless phrase but a prophecy.”
To really understand the meaning of this we have to dig a little deeper into the themes explored in Cloud Atlas,
which author David Mitchell describes as;
One is the interconnectedness of cause and effect; you think you have your own little life
and it runs along its own tracks, especially these days.
We think we’re islands but actually we’re interconnected archipelagos of islands.
Number two, it’s about predacity; the way individuals prey on individuals,
tribes on tribes, corporations on their host societies, states on the individuals within those states.
The mechanics, the electronics of predacity, if I'm allowed to use language like that.
Let’s begin with the interconnectedness of cause and effect.
Our lives are not our own.
From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present.
And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
Cloud Atlas leans heavy on the notion of eternal recurrence
which is often associated with spiritual concepts like reincarnation and karma.
However, the filmmakers expressed that although they welcomed spiritual interpretations,
they also specifically wanted to explore secular perspectives;
There were days where I was preferring 'like you know within your,
let's say, genetic string that you’re actually playing'
rather than saying ‘the soul that is connecting your characters’,
and there were different words and different descriptions for the whole idea of eternal recurrence,
you know, what you might call reincarnation;
which is a word that we’re not afraid of but at the same time if you really say it’s a movie about reincarnation
we would feel like that’s a limitation of perspective.
the interconnectedness of cause and effect is shown in the book the by the motif of a comet-shaped birthmark
found on the main characters of each story, suggesting they are the same soul embodying different characters,
but in the film they changed this by using the same actors to play different roles,
turning the journey of one soul into a story of many.
By reusing the same actors, they purposefully alienate the audience from the individual characters
to instead encourage them to draw connections between them on a level that transcends their individual stories.
I love this idea that you can show just at the facial level
that the main characters in the film are being reincarnated again and again in different time zones.
and what you get is a sort of, well the word is actually matrix; a matrix of pilgrims' progresses
of characters on ethical journeys through time, just through the faces of the actors.
Another way the filmmakers expanded on the theme of interconnectedness
is by changing the narrative structure of the original novel.
After a brief prologue, the six storylines are, somewhat similarly to the novel,
briefly introduced in chronological order,
but then there’s a pivotal moment where that structure is broken.
There’s a very particular moment where, once the field opens up to intercutting between the sequences
without any order anymore and with an internal connectedness and internal flow
that in our opinion makes even more sense than any other structure could have made for a movie,
which is in the beginning of reel 3 where Jim Sturgess' Chang meets Sonmi for the first time.
I know you are Sonmi 451.
There's this moment where you can stay with what you’re used to or you can go elsewhere and join us.
And we felt like, okay you've had 45 minutes to get prepared for it and now you should take that choice.
You can remain here and risk being discovered,
or you can come with me.
Again, the distinctive qualities of film are used to further diffuse the boundaries between each story
and emphasize their interconnectedness, leading to a structure where stories are intercut
based on musical flow, visual connections and shared emotional states.
The purpose of all of this is to show, regardless of your spiritual or religious beliefs;
the deeply intricate ways in which our actions impact the world around us,
captured into words in Sonmi’s revelation;
We talked about it a lot, this Jose Saramago line that we reference;
‘the nature of our immortal lives is in the consequence of our words and deeds
that go apportioning themselves throughout all time’;
it’s a really beautiful secular way of expressing karma or reincarnation.
This brings us to the second theme of Cloud Atlas
which reveals the implications of this interconnectedness of cause and effect
and brings us closer to answering the opening question of how beauty will save the world.
There is only one rule that binds all people,
one governing principle that defines every relation on God's green earth.
Predacity is the main source of conflict in Cloud Atlas,
it is reflected in the stories of each of the characters as they struggle against greed, power, malevolence
and all the other qualities that lead to victors and victims, oppressors and oppressed,
reflected by the simple mantra;
The weak are meat, and the strong do eat.
If we take the interconnectedness of the stories into account;
there appears to be a demoralizing truth to this statement,
for although the individual stories end with the main characters achieving some form of victory
over the oppressing forces they’re facing,
on the larger cosmic scale, these victories feel rather inconsequential
as the progress made in each story is diminished by a new form of oppression in the next.
There is a natural order to this world, and those who try to upend it do not fare well.
It raises a serious issue for moral behavior on the individual level;
for why should I suffer and sacrifice for a greater good that’s never going to manifest itself?
Why should I stand against injustice if my effort will only end up being inconsequential?
Here, Solzhenitsyn writes “If only it were all so simple!
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,
and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
but gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states,
nor between classes, nor between political parties either,
but right through every human heart.
At this point in my life, all I know Sixsmith,
is that this world spins from the same unseen forces that twist our hearts.
“During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place;
sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil
and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.
One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances,
a totally different human being.
At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.
But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”
He adds that although we can’t expel evil and injustice on this grand cosmic scale,
we can constrict it within our own heart.
I owe my life to a self-freed slave,
And I cannot in good conscience participate in this kind of business any longer.
Here, we do have agency, and we can make a difference, but we ourselves are responsible to assume it,
and this takes courage and honesty, which at last brings us to the purpose of art.
Against eternal injustice, art offers beauty as its equally eternal antidote.
In the words of Polish poet Cyprian Norwid;
‘beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up.’
It’s difficult to define what this beauty is, but this is exactly the point; it is up to you to do it;
you have to bring your agency to it and define what it is.
Art, in all its many forms, can you help do you this, or at the very least it will help you discover what it’s not.
This process is reflected by the main characters in the film.
Even though their comet-shaped birthmarks no longer represent a spiritual or genetic connection,
it does suggest a new connection through beauty
as they all find meaning and motivation in the beauty transferred to them from those who came before.
It allows each of the characters to elevate their individual and highly particular struggles
to something that comes closer to carrying universal meaning;
Freedom; the fatuous jingle of our civilization.
But only those deprived of it have the barest inkling of what it really is.
This, hopefully, is when we realize that the boundary between our heart
and the rest of world is just a convention, waiting to be transcended.
If we can conceive of doing so, then even the tiniest victory becomes one of cosmic significance.
And what if no one believes this truth?
Someone already does.
Solzhenitsyn wrote that; “One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies”,
To which Cloud Atlas adds;
What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?
It emphasizes that it only takes one drop to preserve goodness and justice,
and within a limitless ocean; the existence of this drop is not a lost cause, it is all that matters.
And so Cloud Atlas makes its case for how the human heart, over and over again,
will save the world in its entirety.
It doesn’t give you a definitive moral path,
but it does urge you to take up the responsibility to find one for yourself.
To stop doing the things that make you feel weak and stand up for what is truly meaningful.
To be that one drop in the ocean.
On this issue, Pope John Paul the Second presented a letter to the artists, in which he wrote;
“On the threshold of the Third Millennium, my hope for all of you who are artists
is that you will have an especially intense experience of creative inspiration.
May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder!
Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person,
and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.
From this wonder there can come that enthusiasm of which Norwid spoke in his poem.
People of today and tomorrow need this enthusiasm
if they are to meet and master the crucial challenges which stand before us.
Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way,
will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path.
In this sense it has been said with profound insight that “beauty will save the world”.