This is a book review. It is also a film review. But mostly, I'm reviewing my life. and how one story supported me along the way.
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
This is a quote the movie adaptation of one of my favourite books, ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell. The interweaving of different plots and narrative styles amazes me, but above all I am captivated by how Mitchell eloquently covers the over-arching theme of oppression through many different time periods, and viewpoints. This is what I love about literature. Its power to both captivate and inform is so powerful.
The above words are simultaneously mine and not. They are my own because I wrote them five years ago for my Personal Statement, in the hope that some almighty university admissions officers would consider me decent enough for a course that would end up moulding me into who I am today.
They are not my own because when I look back at the version of me five years ago, I see a stranger. She is sweet, and kind, and curious. She is insecuredly complex in a very different way to how I am now. I love her because of that, and of how much she had to change in order to write this post five years on. But, despite that love, I no longer call her 'me'.
They are mine, though, because down to the deepest part of me, I believe them to be true, and despite the changes to my body, mind, soul, and temperament (whoever says you don't get more jaded as you get older within this society is deluded), my love for one story remains constant.
They are not, because I literally, despite all logic pointing towards the contrary, thought it would be a good idea to start off my Personal Statement, the only impression I could give potential universities of my unique voice, with a quote from somebody else's writing. I've done more stupid things in my life, certainly. But not many.
Now, anyone who knows me will tell you without a second's thought that when I love something, I love it intensely and loyally, right to the ends of the earth. Both my name and star sign are defined by that trait, so in theory I'm got more loyalty than is healthy in one human. Pumped full of the stuff I am, like a triple espresso. Same intensity, same energy content, same tendency to cause fatigue if consumed too regularly (the metaphor has started to slip here, but you get my point I think).
My friends will also tell you that if you want to make me happy, you need only do one thing, which is offer to watch Cloud Atlas' film adaptation with me. It will keep me contentedly still for the best part of three hours, which can't be said for many things in this world.
I should work on being less easy to please, you say? I should get a life, stop hyper-focusing? Be less odd?
Never, says I.
But what's the point of all this anyway, you reply? Why have I just wasted both of our precious times spouting on in such a cryptic manner over one book, when I'm meant to be writing my own? It's not even that parasocial of a relationship- I don't even have a fanfiction account dedicated to the story or its characters.
Well, yeah. Not a bad point. You win this one.
I guess the answer is that last week's post got me thinking about the relationship between text and reader, that precious 'someone understands me' feeling I love so much. I thought it might be a good idea to elaborate on that feeling a little more, on how a story can become a friend. And there's no story that does all this (and more) for me, better than Cloud Atlas.
For those of you fortunate enough yet to have experienced this story for the first time (or fortunate enough never to have been caught in a room with me when someone asks what my favourite book/film is), I shan't spoil it too much for you:
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (no, not the comedian) is a book spanning six different timelines, loosely following the same path taken by one soul through time and location. The soul's journey through life, death, and reincarnation acts as a vehicle for examining repeated patterns of subjugation, revolution, and hope that seem to be unavoidable symptoms of human existence. Cloud Atlas' characters, and their stories, call the reader to question such damning assumptions however, asserting that if we place faith in human goodness, we may engender a beautiful new world. From a hypochondriac lawyer's diary entries aboard a ship in the mid-19th century, to a 1970's pulpy detective thriller, to a fireside story in the post-apocalypse, Mitchell masterfully transports the reader, testing our imaginations, and empathy, to the limits in a whirlwind of a novel.
...
Now, I will say, Cloud Atlas' downside is that it doesn't lend itself well to short synopses (pipe down David, I'm about to spend an entire blog post being really nice about you, so I've got to at least pretend like I'm giving a balanced critique). I won't judge you for any initial disinterest or accusations of deliberate obtuseness/self-gratifying intellectualism. But if you want to keep on reading, you're going to either need to trust me, or focus on the fact that, for the sake of this blog post, the plot matters less, arguably, than the effect it had on the teenage girl who first read it, and fell in love with metaphor.
I was 13 when I first picked up a copy of the novel. I'd been issued an invitation by one of the most talented and creative people I know to a film evening around her house.
'There's this film I think you'll enjoy Charlotte, it's meant to be amazing'.
Now, the most important thing you need to know about this woman was that teenage me absolutely revered and adored her. She and her parents were heavily involved in our local youth amateur dramatics group. The family had written a play that our music teacher decided to produce as a school that summer, which ended up being one of the first times I stood on a school stage independent of the mandatory nativity or Eisteddfod choir number. This woman and her mother convinced me to take part in the play, taught me how to stand tall and project my voice, how to take up space in a way I'd never thought permissible. After the play, they invited me to partake in a summer of amateur film-making (another one of their many writing projects- is it any wonder I ended up here with such wonderful role-models?). To this day, that summer exists in my memory as one of the best.
My friends are always surprised when I tell them I was a quiet, mousey type of child, given my apparent extroversion and adult inability to ever stop talking. Ever. I'm happier this way, which I owe in most part to that artistic, amazing, family, and the great warmth they showed me in letting me explore drama, music, and the joy that comes from creating art with others. Whilst writing this, I wonder if maybe it's the people who surround Cloud Atlas as much as the text itself that keep my heart warm and passion bright...
Anyway, I digress. All that is to say, when this woman recommended a film, nothing could stop me from watching it.
However.
Because I was going through the oh-so-embarrassing phase of being a teenage patriarchy-enabler through labelling myself as 'not like the other girls', I was vehemently determined to read the book first before watching the film. Wow. So cool. So Intellectual. So superior...
I had three weeks. Well, two weeks when you consider the week it took for a battered second-hand copy auctioned off the internet to be shipped over to the back end of a Welsh beyond. Luckily for me, I possessed an iron will, bolstered by the fortunes of an hour-long bus journey to school, no phone signal, and the ability to read in vehicles without feeling sick.
And read I did. In fact, I practically devoured the text page-by-page. I must admit I struggled to understand some of the earlier and later sections of the novel with their old-fashioned or dialectic writing styles. I was drawn more so towards the more familiar comedic tones of the contemporary anti-hero Timothy Cavendish, and the fantastical dystopia of an escaped 'fabricant' clone Sonmi-451. Despite some difficulties, I found myself completely enchanted by Mitchell's intense readability. I sat in front of my creative idols' telly ready to experience the film version of this story that had just swept me up in a million metaphors, and a curious severed structure I had yet to see replicated in any other text. I had already fallen in love then, but I was yet to realize the extent of my devotion.
Char Aged 14: Ah, Young Love...
Another thing I didn't realize at the time is that the film adaptation of Cloud Atlas has some very problematic attributes, not least of all the way in which race is presented. In order to visually communicate reincarnation cycles, the production team decided to use the same actors throughout all six stories, which entailed almost every single actor presenting as a race that was not their own at least once throughout the film. I won't go into a detailed criticism in this post- I am not the most qualified party to comment on either critical race theory, or visual FX/make-up design/costume- however, I felt it necessary to mention the flaws of this film, the misconception of race as something that can just be put on and taken off, and the painfully stereotypical visual cues the make-up team fell back onto when placing a lot of white actors into a story set in futuristic Korea. The film-makers, I hope, had only the best intentions at heart, but please know that my love affair with Cloud Atlas is made far more complex by the film's most embarrassing choice.
Back in my teenage years however I could not see this complexity, but my love burned brighter and more passionately by the day as I returned to the book, beginning to alter the text with my own markings. I placed post-it-notes painstakingly calligraphied with numbers and names to mark the passages that spoke particularly true to my heart (they're still there now, nearly ten years later). Whilst writing an essay on it as part of my English coursework ('choose whatever book you want, this is a chance to show the examiners your voice'), I took a red crayon- feel free to question my taste, I do constantly- and highlighted yet more meaningful passages. Following another read-through in the summer before I went to university, this book was a state. Tatty, dog-eared, slightly bent due to me shoving it into a squished slot in my suitcase before the drive to Cambridge, but still, above all else, unmistakeably my own.
Char aged 18: Questionable taste in style, unsurpassable taste in literature.
Throughout university, I became Cloud Atlas' biggest and best ambassador, lending the book out to whoever asked for reading recommendations, listening to the film's score whilst studying, hanging the movie poster up in my otherwise quite bare-walled room. When my third year was cut short by the pandemic, I pored over pages and pages of Mitchell's words, in a return to what I knew, what was comfortable. In the semi-lockdowns of 2021 I would repeat the following conversation with my housemates:
'Guess what I've been doing today?'
'What have you done today, Char?'
'I had a spare hour, so I watched the first half of Cloud Atlas.'
Cue confused faces, little head-shakes and supressed cackles as my friends are reminded yet again that, despite the incessant flow of drama and change that constitutes the 2020's, I will always remain on brand and into Cloud Atlas.
Depending upon the exact stage of life I find myself in whilst returning to the story, my empathy rests with a different protagonist. From the reporter Luisa Rey struggling for truth in a male-dominated conspiratorial city, to the revolutionary Sonmi-451. The latter's story, in particular, resonated with me during my transition into a vegan diet (those who know, know...). Throughout the past few years, however, I've found the 20th-century composer Robert Frobisher's struggle to create and distribute music with meaning particularly touching. His conflict with poor mental health has, I hate to admit, also resonated with my brain over the past few years- though to clarify, I do not predict myself losing that particular battle in the way of Frobisher. His beliefs that all boundaries can be crossed if one has the willpower, however, and a particularly impactful scene where dreams himself into a china shop, smashing crockery to create beautiful music, fill me with an unparalleled hope for future connections. Though Frobisher's story is not a happy one, his last words in the book give me hope for a love and joy I dream to one day make the acquaintance of. It's a hope I cling to like the last days of Summer.
You can only imagine my glassy-eyed joy upon discovering that some of my friends were moving to Edinburgh, home of the Scott Monument, a structure heavily featured in film Frobisher's most sentimental scenes. It's a beautiful building, if you've never seen it- the monument splits the Scottish sky neatly in twain. What a rush it was to see Scott for the first time, illuminated by New Year's festivity before the dawn of 2022. Walter Scott does not feature in the book, but his proximity to the text nevertheless means this monument too is cemented in my heart, that's how much this story means to me.
Last month, I finally cemented it onto my body too. A customized comet inked itself onto my skin- mellow brown subtlety in a tiny tattoo studio in Edinburgh. It's only small, but I couldn't be happier. After all, the novel's characters have been there for me throughout the best and hardest years of my life. I came-of-age with them, and yet still there's more to come.
Char Aged 23, and Char's Tattoo, aged 2 weeks: Together at last (forgive the blurriness).
So, that just about brings us to now, freshly-tatted thigh and all. Thanks for sticking through those whirlwind 2000 words of adoration. I hope you're closer to understanding now that, for me, this story has been just as impactful upon my life as any formative physical event. Can you identify, I wonder? Is any story of such utter significance to you? One that's written within your heart and etched into your memories? I hope you can, because to depend upon, change with, and be changed by someone else's words... Well, that's one of the most beautiful things about the collision of art and human experience.
Words cannot possibly describe the debt I owe to Mitchell for bringing this text to light, to those who introduced it to me, and to those who share in its words. I suppose this post goes to show how far a story's truth can be bent by the will of a reader - Sonmi would call that a mistruth, perhaps, but I hope in this case she would verify Death of The Author.
I am one of her biggest fans, after all.
Her revolutionary Orison, Mitchell's spiritual philosophies put to paper, and Frobisher's conviction that boundaries are but 'conventions' all spur me on through contemporary complexity. And when all seems lost, when that complexity becomes too busy for my brain, I find myself returning to Cloud Atlas' (yes, both versions) final resonant words. That when faced with a life full of insurmountable animosity, when each day my attempts to make the world a more positive place feel like but drops in the widest ocean of injustice, I simply have to question:
What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” (Adam Ewing, p.508)
The Scott Monument is closed to the public at the moment, so I haven't yet been able to scale it and stand in Frobisher's place. But one day I will. I will climb it at sunrise, and see the Edinburgh skyline become bright with the possibility of new life and love.
Things will be so perfectly, brilliantly, beautifully well. As will I.
Charlotte and Scott Reunited: One of the least problematic relationships I've ever had. No toxicity here, just love.
References:
Mitchell, D. (2008). Cloud Atlas. Random House Publishing Group.
Tykwer, T., Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (2013, February 22). Cloud Atlas [Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi]. Cloud Atlas Productions, X-Filme Creative Pool, Anarchos Pictures.
Comentarios