The other day, we watched a movie. You might, perhaps, have seen it. It’s called Cloud Atlas.

Based on David Mitchell’s best-selling book from 2004, it is a film made on a grand scale, with a big budget and a rather impressive cast that includes, among others, Halle Berry, Tom Hanks, Jim Broadbent and Susan Sarandon.

Prior to watching, we didn’t know an awful lot about Cloud Atlas, its plot and the principles behind it. Come the closing credits, we couldn’t have been more gripped.

You see, this is a movie that is based around that thing that inspires our efforts here at OM®. That thing is connection.

We don’t want to give too much away, but in a nutshell, the novel that led to this major film production took multiple stories, each set in a different era, and set about showing how our lives link together. In different times and in different places, the same threads run, binding us all and making us as one.

The stories are interrelated and interwoven. From a remote Pacific Island in the Nineteenth Century, to a bleak and distant post-apocalyptic future, there are constant echoes that underline that thing that we’ve long been telling you. That, as human beings, we all have a great deal in common. That for reasons that, in a large part remain unfathomable, we are all connected.

To summarize the most relevant supporting material that we’ve managed to find on this subject, Cloud Atlas shows that ‘a single act of kindness [can] ripple across centuries’ and explores how ‘the actions and consequences of individual lives impact on one another through the past, present and future’. To quote a favorite line from the movie, ‘Our lives are not our own, we are bound to others past and present. With each crime and every kindness, we birth our future’. To quote another, ‘The phenomena that determine the course of our lives begin long before we’re born and continue long after we perish’.

You can see why it is that Cloud Atlas has struck such a chord here in our studio. We thought you might enjoy this trailer . . .

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAqFyaQ5s&w=560&h=315]

There’s not much more for us to add, although before we go, we’d like to share the thoughts of Tom Hanks, who like ourselves, has given Cloud Atlas and its subject matter a great deal of thought in recent times.

‘[One character in the movie] says this life is a door,’ he explains. ‘It will open onto another [life]. I think that’s a profound and concrete way of saying that we are all connected. You can have any brand of theological background or belief that you want, but I think that’s undeniable. I think that human history is about the connectivity of us to our ancestors and the offspring that are still a hundred years away.’

Here at OM®, we couldn’t agree more and, for anyone who shares our interests, we recommend Cloud Atlas. Death, life and birth, love, hope and courage, past, present and future, EVERYTHING is connected.

We are all connected.