‘Cloud Atlas,’ with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, uses recurring props and characters to tie together a complex story

For a movie that’s unlike anything ever attempted on the big screen, don’t be surprised if “Cloud Atlas” leaves you with a profound sense of déjà vu.

That’s no accident.

To reinforce the themes of reincarnation and interconnectivity in the film, directors Lana and Andy Wachowski (“The Matrix”) and Tom Tykwer (“Run Lola Run”) made sure the actors, the sets and the props were recycled as much as possible.

The film’s stars — Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw among them — were shuttled between roles in each of the film’s six segments, which span 500 years on a daily basis. That they didn’t know if they’d be shooting an 1850s period piece or a futuristic sci-fi thriller until they received the call sheet the night before made it all the more fun.

“It was weird because you’d say hello to Jim Sturgess in the morning as he was on his way to his trailer for his makeup on that set,” says Ben Whishaw, one of those who played multiple roles in the film. “And then a few hours later, you’d walk by an Asian man and you’d do a double take and go, ‘Oh my God, is that Jim under all of that?’ And that happened constantly, people not recognizing people.”

“We had the constant divergence at just about the time that I could not take much more of the self-loathing of Zachary the goat-herder [from the 22nd century] and I needed a break from that,” says Hanks. “It would be time to go off and shoot some of the evil Dr. Goose in the 1850s.”

This process was an intentional decision, planned a year before cameras even started rolling, to have the actors play souls that develop their characters over lifetimes, says Tykwer, who split directing duties in half with the Wachowskis.

“We felt that it was good that the actors weren’t consistently staying with one character, because we wanted them to act more like the larger character arc between all of their roles,” he said.

That philosophy was also used elsewhere in the film. Every one of its more than a hundred cuts, which go back and forth through time, was meticulously planned. An actor may walk into a doorway as one character, then emerge through another doorway as another character entirely.

Jeweled buttons that Hanks’ Dr. Goose eyes greedily in one scene reappear as beads around his goat-herder’s neck in another scene. A design on one character’s clothes from ’70s San Francisco shows up again as wallpaper in a safehouse in 2144 Seoul.

“We tried to keep some shapes and some themes going through different stories and through the sets,” says Hugh Bateup, one of the films’ two designers.

“Hopefully, if you see the movie, it won’t be obvious, but you’ll just feel the similarities.”

There were essentially two film shoots happening at the same time with two full crews. One was run by the Wachowskis and the other by Tykwer at different soundstages in Berlin’s mammoth Babelsberg studios. But the double-teaming helped get the film wrapped after just 50 days of shooting.

“All relevant and great art is always going to be inherently risky,” says Lana Wachowski.

Source : nydailynews[dot]com