Cloud Atlas is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious and mysterious movies of the year: it’s an interconnected story spanning several eras of human history, with the same actors playing different characters in each one. As Wikipedia puts it in their summary of the novel:
The novel consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. All stories but the last are interrupted at some moment, and after the sixth story concludes at the center of the book, the novel “goes back” in time, “closing” each story as the book progresses in terms of pages but regresses in terms of the historical period in which the action takes place.
As if that weren’t bonkers enough, the movie is being helmed by arch-visual stylists Tom Tykwer (Perfume) and The Wachowskis. We’ve now got our first official glimpse at the movie, with images showing Tom Hanks as Zachry, a tribesman who meets an emissary from a future civilisation (Berry), and Ben Whishaw as Robert, the apprentice to a Belgian composer (Jim Broadbent). Check the gallery for the full size images.
[via EW]
