Where they went wrong (from a fan of the movie)

I took the presence of the birthmark as an indication of a soul that would (at some point in that lifetime) earn its right of passage to the new world by overcoming its basic human failings.

The "Hugo Weaving" soul and the "Hugh Grant" souls were never going to make it to the new world. They were failures.

Frobisher, Luisa, Cavendish, Ewing, and Son Mi, all earned their passage to the new world. And Zachary is the last to make the leap, only in his incarnation after the fall as the valley shepherd, does he finally cast off that fear, paranoia, and human weakness... symbolized by the breaking of the necklace bound to the button his former incarnation stole from Ewing centuries prior.

I think that's why we finally see the birthmark on Tom Hanks only at the very end of the movie, he's made it, and only just.

The one I wonder about is Sixsmith. I'm not sure he makes it to the new world... we never see a birthmark on him in any of his incarnations. I like to think that somewhere along the way he earned his passage, but we never see him among the prescients. But who knows... maybe he is one of Meronym and Zachary's grandchildren.

Then again we never see a birthmark on Keith David or David Gyasi, but we see them among the prescients along with Broadbent (and Mister Meeks!) So I assume they make it to the new world too.

Yeah that's the way it is in the book, that the main characters with the birthmark in each timeframe are the same soul.
But in the movie, its different. Its supposed to be that the actors play the reincarnations of the souls they represent, and the birthmark is for the one that transcends, or emits influential change. That's why every soul who had the birthmark wrote something that was passed down to the next soul who obtained the birthmark, and so on. And all these characters were connected together in each lifetime.

Example is like Tom Hanks started as an evil person trying to poison Ewing, to then a greedy hotel clerk, to Issac who was part of the nuclear/oil scandal but then met halle berry for the first time and was about to have a change of heart before he was killed, to then relapsing into evil again as the irish author mob person, then down to Zachary who had the birthmark, and experienced evil hallucinations from all his past lives, which he overcomes, and also finally finds love with halle berry. Love was like the overall message in this movie.

On a side note, a tragic one I interpreted was robert frobisher's because he made lots of mistakes in his life by stealing and being unfaithful to sixsmith, and then ended up killing himself in the hopes to see Sixsimth again in a different, better life. But as shown in the future timeframes, he never was. By ending his life halfway, its like that messed with his karma and he never was able to fully transcend like the other souls. He just kind of fell into the crowd, even though his letters to sixsimth and his music the Cloud Atlas Sextet had an impact way into the future.

Yeah, so that's what I saw how the whole soul reincarnation thing worked in this film. Loved it!

Adam Ewing - on his chest
Robert Frobisher - on his lower back
Luisa Rey - On her shoulder
Timothy Cavendish - on his knee
Sonmi-451 - on her neck
Zachry - back of his head

All the main character in each story.

For each of these characters we see their journeys through time, along with some other characters whose voyages were no so sweet, played by Hugh Grant & Hugo Weaving. I find these two actors names a little interesting as they both can be very simple phrases; You grant or You go weaving. (sidebar?)

For job of the viewer is to compare these main characters to their actors through time and see each voyage. Of course excepting reincarnation as a possibility helps to complete each picture.

It's all connected.

From a practical standpoint, would you really have like to see each of the 'comet' characters played by one actor? Can you really see Jim Broadbent as Luisa or Sonmi?? Halle Berry as Timothy Cavendish? Would've been a bit much for me!

I think people are in danger of being a bit to linear and literal regarding trying to follow the actors paths' through the film. Obviously the book doesn't make this sort of connection at all - only the echo effect that each 'comet' character has on the next.

It's for this reason I don't think we should judge the worthiness of each person's life - it's not so simple to say they were on an upward curve that led to Zachary. Or even that Hugh and Hugo were evil incarnate on a downward path. Even these characters, through their lives and deeds, affected the actions of another, and so on. Any positive, and negative for that matter, outcomes, were dependent on these people's interactions with each other, and in a more spiritual sense, the echo of their actions through the generations.

'Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.'

Ewing's redemption for instance, would not have been possible without Autua's intervention. Frobisher ultimately lived quite a sinful life, but his actions leant on Sixsmith, and through to Luisa etc.

If you want to take a more literal view of the film, and interpret the actors as the same soul in different roles, you obviously can - Ewing and Tilda become Hae Joo and Sonmi, Sachs and Luisa eventually reborn as Zachary and Meronym. You could argue these are the most important romances of the movie. Just as an aside, I don't like this interpretation, or the creation of these romances and use of the same actors in different roles - none of these exist in the novel at all, and I think it's better for it. But it seems you can't have a movie without a romantic interest :(

Playing musical actors only bothered me when I couldn't suspend my disbelief (e.g. Asian Ben Whishaw). What really got me was the way they cut the stories together. In the book, 6 stories were told in 2 parts each for a total of 12 micro-stories. It was a pretty elegant way to deliver the narrative without pulling the reader in too many directions or lingering within a story too long.

The movie didn't observe this format at all, opting instead to switch between stories as often as the scenes changed. I was never able to settle into anything before it changed again. It all just seemed hectic. That alone made it a very frustrating movie to watch. I kept wanting to scream "hold on a second!" but by the time they slowed down, the credits were rolling.

They could make an infinitely better film out of the existing one just with editing. I'd buy that on Blu-ray, but I don't think I could watch this version again without getting an aneurism or a heart attack.

You guys are reading far to much into this pretentios mess of a movie. I guess you can find "deep" meaning in anything if you try hard enough. This film however? <shakes head>

I was bothered by some of the more radical make-up-accidents, but I nevertheless liked the idea, that the actors play multiple roles. I didn't read the book and am not much into the whole "reincarnating souls thing", but the point that was thus made is, at least for me: there exist "life stories", or stereotypes of people or situations that happen over and over again (I think at one time Halle Berry even asks why we seem to repeat the same mistakes, or something like that). This is also prominently seen in the Soylent Green-joke, which shows that life imitates art, repeating itself even in the most obviously bad ways, as then seen in Neo-Seoul. And the same holds true for people. There will always be a need for someone to do the right thing. Others have done it before, and we need to do it again, if we come in situations where we see that things are not right. The film shows bad things that lie in our past, and how some moral individuals worked together to make them better, even as we must be aware, that our future will still hold lots of possibilities for wrongdoing. An everlasting struggle, which sometimes is supported by seemingly fleeting things like old letters or a piece of music. But if they touch the hearts of people then they pickup an immortal life of their own, improving the world through the ages.
Wow. That sounded cheesy ;-) But still, I like the movie especially for the fact that it inspires such thoughts in me.

No they didn't go wrong because when you reincarnate you are the same soul but not the same person. For example in the present life I am a woman but in my previous past life I could have been a man, same goes for the future one etc. It's not necessary that you'll always be a man or a woman and of course it's not necessary to look the same in each life.