Movie pushes envelope

Three visionary directors rewrote the rules for their adaptation of David Mitchell’s celebrated novel, writes Rebecca Keegan.

As they swept through airports while making their ambitious, risky new movie Cloud Atlas, directors Andy and Lana Wachowski got used to answering a surprisingly tough question from customs officials.

“They’d say ‘what’s your movie about’,” Andy said. “It’s about the sum of human experience. They always look up and go ‘oh, really’.”

The Wachowski siblings made Cloud Atlas together with German director Tom Tykwer.

If filmmaking were an Olympic sport, the trio would score maximum difficulty points.

Their script, adapted from British author David Mitchell’s bestselling, puzzle-like 2004 novel, vaults through six interwoven storylines spanning 500 years and several genres, from a 19th century sea yarn to a 20th century thriller to a post-apocalyptic romance.

The movie’s sprawling narrative and independently financed $US102 million ($100 million) budget required its three filmmakers to embark on a six-year search for financing and ultimately shoot on two sets at the same time, one helmed by the Wachowskis, the other by Tykwer.

In the novel, the six interconnected stories unfold chronologically, until the middle of the book, where the sequence reverses.

Lana proposed to her co-writers a structure in which the stories unravel concurrently and wrote the first 10 minutes this way to persuade them.

“We want everyone not only to enjoy it but to be challenged by it and stimulated by it,” Lana said. “It’s great when people see a movie, but it’s better when they spend the whole day talking about it.”