Trying to explain the Central Issue

Here is what Wiki has to say about what Nietzsche "seemed" to be saying about Eternal Recurrence

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."

"Some have suggested that the notion of eternal return is related to the overman since willing the eternal return of the same is a necessary step if the overman is to create new values, untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval; yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. It could seem that the overman, in being devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while still recognizing it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism. One must have the strength of the overman in order to will the eternal recurrence of the same; that is, only the overman will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any choice they made."

xx

Energy Issues

Like so many movies, Cloud Atlas is about TEOTWAWKI, except that unlike Soylent Green etc it is not set in a specific time but spans some 6 centuries [another "eternal recurrence" of SIX].

It is unclear if the last scene on Mars is the end of humans but it IS clear [as in Avatar] that Earth has been abused to the extent it is uninhabitable [ie for humans, as we know it].  Also as for such movies the REASON for the end is a "contest" between running OUT of energy and pollution caused by that using up process.

It all starts [energy wise] in 1970s when we had the TWO "Oil Crises" ie 1973 [Israeli Issue] and 1979 [Iran Issue], both of which had America experience petrol rationing and realizing that the days were well and truly gone since America was self-sufficient in oil.

Cloud Atlas is very clever in juxtapositioning the two crises by doing a re-run of the 1979 events of the psy-op movie The China Syndrome which prophesiesed the 3 Mile Island Nuclear near disaster, but making the date as 1973.  Luisa Rey is the facsimile of the Jane Fonda character, right down to the VW, and Isaac Sachs is Jack Lemmon character.

Our hero Luisa foils the Swanekke psy-op just as Jane did for the 3 Mile Island look alike, and it looks like the outside scene of Luisa and Isaac was filmed at Unit 2 of 3 Mile Island, which was never re-commissioned.

So once again Cloud Atlas brings actual history [rather than fiction], and other movies, into the story.  But let's dig deeper.

Big clues are fusion engines and "rad levels being high"

Nuclear Fusion has been seen as the Holy Grail since 1950s but today the experts agree that IF it is ever to be a reality, that it is still 50 to 100 years away.

In 1973 Swanekke [ie same as 3 Mile Island etc] is able to effectively generate power via Nuclear Fission, but there are two downsides to fission, ie the 3 Mile Island issue [which came to be with Chernobyl] of disaster radiation as well as the radiation of the waste products of the fission process.  And while oil reserves are well less than 50 years, uranium also has a use-by-date at about 200 years.

So what that all suggests is that the oil did run out, fission "took over" [where it could] and by the time it too ran out at The Fall [exactly 200 years away] it seems that the Prescients had developed fusion, BUT the damage had been done by the long term use of fission.

So the end message is that although fusion technology overcame the need to dig another oilwell or uranium mine, the waste products of those hundreds of years of use/abuse had produced the "On the Beach" scenario [except OTB was about radiation from a nuclear WAR rather than long term fission caused radiation].

The words said to Meronym, "every minute you are out there..." seem to suggest that these Prescients were the privileged few [Illuminati? - whatever] who lived in a type of cocoon with radiation control whereas the other 99.9% simply dies as in OTB.  Similarly it seems Hawaii is the Australia of OTB where the radiation has a time delay in reaching that far [from America] but there is no doubt that survival there has a use-by-date [but local would not know that].

In between we saw Sachs was doing business in Korea and in Korea section we see a vehicle is powered by Swanekke Power Corp. What that means is anyone's guess but it looks like it is fusion.

The Messiah Issues

In Cloud Atlas a girl from the 2144 time slot, Sonmi 451, becomes a type of Messiah with some similarities to Jesus but also some notable exceptions.

It is not shown if she became a Messiah to her own people in Korea at the time but it seems she didn't, but she became a different Messiah to the "Old-Uns" up to 2215 than to the ValleyFolk up to 2321.  That issue is detailed between Zachry and Meronym, almost ending in bloodshed when Old Georgie tried to intervene.

Meronym says the Old-Uns behaved in a "Judas" type manner thus making a tangible comparison to the Jesus story and the deaths of both Jesus and Sonmi 451.

On the other hand the ValleyFolk seemed to consider her to be "a God", and that is why Zachry gets so upset when Meronym explains that she was not.

Finally, as far as we are [not] told, it seems Meronym and the Prescients had no time for such matters.

We then see from The Abbess [a type of Shaman it seems] that her reference to the "teachings" of Sonmi 451 is a document which is very "Biblesque" entitled "The Revelation of Sonmi 451" and underneath it says "as recorded by Archivist Park", AND it is hand-written.

Now we see later that Sonmi 451 sort of anticipates that Park has been receptive to her interview content by her words "someone already has", BUT it seems Park has gone a huge way further than his job description which he explained up front, in DOING something about it.

In fact it seems that he was SO "overwhelmed" that he took up the role of an "Apostle" which surely would have led  to his own death once the document was discovered, given how "classified" was the interview.

The questions then arise, firstly why the ValleyFolk are not referencing her actual words that were broadcast over the world and beyond, and secondly how did they get hold of this apparently one off manuscript [a bit Dead Seas Scrolls like huh?]?

Given their agricultural and remote lifestyle [which apparently saved them from the Fall once the oil ran out] I guess it is logical to say they did not HEAR the "live" Revelation, so that leaves the second question.

So to return to "notable exceptions" to the Jesus gig, it seems we are on a parallel course with Life of Brian, which was a Pythonic satire on Jesus imploring J Doe of the time to FOLLOW him, but Brian trying in vain to STOP people following him.

The path here is slightly different and is perfectly explained in the movie by Park asking Somni if she believes in a Heaven.  Quick as a flash she replies that if she did it would be in the form of a new DOOR OPENING, and we slide back in time to she and Hae-Joo Chang, as Tilda and Ewing meeting up again after his near death experience.

The bottom line is not a Heaven as for the Jesus salvation philosophy but the Nietzsche style Eternal Recurrence.

Martian Chronicles

Having now read the whole book I can say for sure the first scene in Cloud Atlas is "-And the Moon Be Still as Bright" in 2001 and final scene is "The Long Years" in 2026.

In the first one we see Astronaut Hathaway sitting by the fire as in TMC devastated by the cold, wind and loneliness and 25 years later he has brought his [virtual] family up where they are the last remaining humans on Mars [having missed the last flight back to Earth, and death].

You can see the dead city behind which he lights up at night to ease loneliness and the house architecture and location are as described in TMC, so everything cross checks, especially the twin moons as described in TMC.

But in TMC there is more [with interest to 2001 A Space Odyssey] where his captain from 2001 returns FROM A 25 YEAR JUPITER trip and stops off at Mars on way back to Earth [if it's still there], and having aged just as Bowman does in ASO.

now Kubrick used the [Earth?] Moon as the 2001 start point and not Mars [for obvious reasons] but one can only guess if the scene where he eats asparagus and spills the wine is intened to be on Earth OR was this in fact intended by Kubrick to replicate the scene from TMC where Captain Wilder has a meal with the Hathaway family on Mars [where in fact the family are androids explaining in a metaphysical sense (as per several of the TMC stories) why Bowman eats alone and sees nobody but Hathaway].

It's food for thought and the projection to the old man in bed dying [same as Hathaway does] followed by a spot of Zarathustra's Eternal Recurrence certainly fits very nicely in a Kubrick sort of way.

Nietzsche Philosophy #2 - Apollonian and Dionysian

This Philosophy is fairly obviously reflected in Cloud Atlas by the TRAGEDY of Frobisher.  This is some of what Wiki has to say:

The Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology: Apollo and Dionysus. While the concept is famously related to The Birth of Tragedy, poet Hölderlin spoke of them before, and Winckelmann talked of Bacchus. One year before the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wrote a fragment titled "On Music and Words". In it he asserted the Schopenhauerian judgment that music is a primary expression of the essence of everything. Secondarily derivative are lyrical poetry and drama, which represent mere phenomenal appearances of objects. In this way, tragedy is born from music.

Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism found in the so-called wisdom of Silenus. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering depicted by characters on stage, passionately and joyously affirmed life, finding it worth living. A main theme in The Birth of Tragedy was that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttrieben" ("artistic impulses") forms dramatic arts, or tragedies. He goes on to argue that this fusion has not been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity and logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion and ecstasy. Nietzsche used these two forces because, for him, the world of mind and order on one side, and passion and chaos on the other formed principles that were fundamental to the Greek culture. Apollonian side being a dreaming state, full of illusions; and Dionysian being the state of intoxication, representing the liberations of instinct and dissolution of boundaries.

The relationship between the Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions is apparent, in the interplay of tragedy: the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make order (in the Apollonian sense) of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate, though he dies unfulfilled in the end.

So the author has cast Sixsmith as Apollonian [but with "a twist" of "love conquers all" in there] and Frobisher as Dionysian, and has the two as homosexual lovers [Paglia explains this trait per: "Rejection of – or combat with – Dionysian by socially constructed Apollonian virtues accounts for the historical dominance of men (including asexual and homosexual men; and childless and/or lesbian-leaning women) in science, literature, arts, technology and politics], with Sixsmith the dedicated scientist, not afraid to be the one off whistleblower, and Frobisher the "intoxicated" Tchaikovsky facsimile, albeit most of their relationship is via letters [a reference to Tchaikovsky and his letters to Mde von Melk].

Of course the tragedy does get played out eventually but not before some very entertaining scenes including a Dionysian plate smashing scene [where Sixsmith allows himself some "slack"] that puts Lester Burnham to shame in the asparagus scene as he morphs from Apollonian to Dionysian.

Nietzsche Philosophy #1 - Master–slave morality

Cloud Atlas explores this concept throughout the 500 year time span of the movie and [apart from the "Mars scenes" at start/end] the movie starts and ends with this matter.

It starts with the signing of a "slave contract" for the benefit of Haskell Moore in America and ends with Ewing burning the contract in front of Moore and his famous "ocean is made of drops" statement.

Here is a Wiki summary of what Nietzsche had to say about "The "slave revolt" in morals, Master–slave morality":

In Beyond Good And Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche's genealogical account of the development of modern moral systems occupies central place. For Nietzsche, a fundamental shift took place from thinking in terms of "good" and "bad" toward "good" and "evil."

The initial form of morality was set by a warrior aristocracy and other ruling castes of ancient civilizations. Aristocratic values of "good" and "bad" coincided with and reflected their relationship to lower castes such as slaves. Nietzsche presents this "master morality" as the original system of morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. To be "good" was to be happy and to have the things related to happiness: wealth, strength, health, power, etc. To be "bad" was to be like the slaves over which the aristocracy ruled, poor, weak, sick, pathetic—an object of pity or disgust rather than hatred.

So at the luncheon on the Chatham Islands Reverend Horrox is extolling the "perspicuity" of Moore as to what is called "the natural order", ie what Nietzsche was to soon define as "master morality" as above, and we already saw Horrox at the contract sealing say Moore is a GOOD man, ie the master morality version of good [when Nietzsche was but 5 years old and yet to seek to question that].

Cleverly there is an aside where the "slavery of women" is brought up by Madame Horrox and ridiculed by the men which was taken up 144 years later by Spielberg in Jurassic Park where the 2 men are dumbfounded by the female paleontologist casually ending their own prolix ramblings with "and woman inherited the world" to signify that for all intents and purposes women DID take over in 1970, giving us the "Beauty" depicted in American Beauty in 1999.

Wiki continues:

"Slave morality" comes about as a reaction to master-morality. Here, value emerges from the contrast between good and evil: good being associated with other-worldliness, charity, piety, restraint, meekness, and submission; and evil seen as worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave morality as pessimistic and fearful, values for them serving only to ease the existence for those who suffer from the very same thing. He associates slave-morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions, in a way that slave-morality is born out of the ressentiment of slaves. Nietzsche argued that the idea of equality allowed slaves to overcome their own condition without hating themselves. And by denying the inherent inequality of people (such as success, strength, beauty or intelligence), slaves acquired a method of escape, namely by generating new values on the basis of rejecting something that was seen as a perceived source of frustration. It was used to overcome the slave's own sense of inferiority before the (better-off) masters. It does so by making out slave weakness to be a matter of choice, by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness." The "good man" of master morality is precisely the "evil man" of slave morality, while the "bad man" is recast as the "good man."

Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a source of the nihilism that has overtaken Europe. Modern Europe and Christianity exist in a hypocritical state due to a tension between master and slave morality, both values contradictorily determining, to varying degrees, the values of most Europeans (who are motley). Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which he deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. He cautions, however, that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow their own "inner law." A favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are."

A long standing assumption about Nietzsche is that he preferred master over slave morality. However, Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann rejected this interpretation, writing that Nietzsche's analyses of these two types of morality were only used in a descriptive and historic sense, they were not meant for any kind of acceptance or glorifications.

So the scene moves to Autua, the slave in revolt and we go straight to Nietzsche when his complaint is not simply "I don't want to be a slave" but "I no make GOOD slave", ie the slave morality concept, which he finally achieves by his good deeds, which rub off on Ewing, rendering the "good" man Moore as EVIL.

This theme, in various forms, has already permeated throughout the lives of the people over the 500 years time span.

Summary

Cloud Atlas is a movie that can be viewed and enjoyed on many levels and it is left to the viewer to match the level of complexity with their own level of "life experience" and perception [or nihilism].

And the more common reaction is to simply give up on the American Beauty "Look Closer" task, get angry in the All American "Poor egotist, he has no way of knowing" manner and blame the movie, which is the reason it was not a huge box office success.

But that is up to the viewer because as we learn from The Happening "But he's as good as anybody going"