How might data design help dealing with Cloud Atlas madness ?
Or how I mapped in detail a complex movie, found no answer to my questions, but accepted that symbols were not to be understood.
The movie Cloud Atlas (Lana and lilly Wachowski — 2013) is an adaptation from the book of the same title (David Mitchell — 2004). It is hard to tell what the story is about as it is a composite of six almost independent sub-stories running over six time periods. Almost, because some artefacts are passing through their five borders : A symphony, a letter and… a couple of actors (who obviously play different roles). By doing so, those artefact are sewing time and space in a mysterious and incomprehensible maze. At the end the whole thing seems coherent but definitely hard to pitch.
If you will, have a look at the trailer :
When I saw Cloud Atlas 6 years ago, it perplexed me at first. I felt something wasn’t right but I couldn’t tell what. Soon, it became an obsession. I wanted, even needed to break through my perplexity :
why 6 ?
why such a timeline?
why this recycling of actors?
It made me feel that some hidden universal laws rule it all,
like in the real world, huh ?
As designers do, when I don’t get something, I try to represent it. So I took a pen and began mapping things through different angles. After a week I had a full data visualization, three days of overdue work on my project and a reputation of being a weirdo in my co-working space.
That is what it look like :
An iterative symbolic movie
I got some more clarity doing this job even though my obsession didn’t totally vanish. Sure, I didn’t have the loud and clear answer I was looking for, but that was ok, I was convinced that no unique answer would exist anyway. Moreover, I was used to the blurry contact of unspeakable truth that I could experience from meditating on symbols, such as typographic character or moon shapes (yeah I really am a designer -_-)’
So I came to think about this movie as a symbol in itself, something that, while containing a primitive reality, never exactly shows the same face depending of who is watching, when, where …
However, I kept reading stuff and made a discovery that changed it all : the original book didn’t mention any link between the characters, as the reuse of actors would have suggest. I felt scammed, those obvious soul connections appeared as a core lead for my understanding, I couldn’t accept it was a superficial stylistic decoration without any meaning.
Imagine Pulp fiction with John Travolta acting Vincent Vega, but also Marcellus and Mia Wallace, it would definitely have an impact on your understanding of the movie. Does a director really could take that kind of decision without regard for the original intent???
6 years passed, I get softer. I don’t believe anymore that an idea is belonging to the one who shout it first. Ideas can merge, why prevent an artist to play and build new ideas from some other. Thinking it now, I am at peace with the Wachowski siblings. First because I think adapting an artwork with a personal logic is kind of brave, also because to be honest, I didn’t reed Mitchell’s book nor deeply verify how much the original story got twisted (-_-)’ — (my disillusion might have been initiate by an illusion). Anyway, whether or not it has switch from his source, Cloud Atlas movie in my perception remains a deep piece, conductive to meditation, as symbol should be.
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