Cloud Atlas

Two crews shot Lilly and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer’s 2012 film at once: the Wachowskis on the 1849 strand and the two futures, Tykwer on 1936, 1973 and 2012. All three planned every segment together before splitting for the shoot, part of why it changes temperament so often. The real departure is structural: in David Mitchell’s novel five of the six stories break off mid flight and finish in reverse order after the sixth, a Russian doll design Mitchell assumed made the book unfilmable. The film intercuts all six from the opening, so that suspense goes and the link is carried instead by the same faces recurring across strands. Financing was independent and mostly German, with seven million dollars of the Wachowskis’ own. Shooting began on 16 September 2011 at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, and Glasgow stood in for both San Francisco and London. It took 27.1 million dollars at home against 103.4 million abroad, and opened in China on 31 January 2013 with thirty nine minutes cut. A good fit if you want to track one performer across strands, age and gender included, keeping score of who is who. Less so if white actors made up as East Asian characters in the future Korean section will trouble you; MANAA criticised it, the directors calling it continuity of souls.