Temporal Palimpsests and Ontological Rewriting: The Cinematic Poetics of Cloud Atlas

This study presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the film Cloud Atlas (2012), adapted from David Mitchell’s novel, through the intersecting frameworks of temporal cyclicality, narrative interiority, mythopoetic reconstruction, embodied memory, and posthuman subject formation. The six narrative planes in the film are interlinked not only through successive temporal modalities but also through gestural continuity, narrative reverberation, and multiple forms of subjectivation. In this regard, time is no longer linear but emerges as a palimpsestic field of layered inscriptions, transforming into a narrative matrix that reframes notions of identity, memory, and ethics. The central claim of the study is that cinema functions here not merely as a representational form but as an epistemological apparatus capable of reconstructing being. Motifs such as the recurring birthmark, repeated gestures, actors reappearing in multiple roles, and the transformation of narrative materials (journals, letters, testimonies, novels) through intertemporal transmission establish affective and corporeal connections across temporal boundaries. These narrative structures are examined through Gilles Deleuze’s time-image, Judith Butler’s performativity, Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman ontology, and Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity, illuminating the ethical resonances that emerge through spectator engagement. Positioning Cloud Atlas as a poetic construction of modern myth, the study interprets Sonmi’s transformation, from witness to ritualized cultural figure, via Barthes’ theory of mythologies, Benjamin’s storyteller, and Foucault’s author function. The film, rather than merely reproducing narrative, stages each re-enactment as an ethical act, inviting the viewer into a renewed relationship with memory. Ultimately, the study argues that Cloud Atlas is not merely a layered narrative but a cinematic mode of being, an organism that regenerates its own temporality, subjectivity, and mythology. Through this lens, the study offers an original contribution to contemporary film theory, emphasizing cinema’s power to construct memory, stage ethical positions, and reconfigure identity.Keywords: temporality, mythopoesis, narrative recursion, embodied memory, ontological rewriting