Lana Wachowski: ‘I made Cloud Atlas in order to challenge transphobia’
The co-creator of new film, Cloud Atlas, Lana Wachowski, has said she hopes that the film can challenge the attitudes of transphobic people.
Lana Wachowski, who came out as transgender this year, said that one character in the film, a waitress who plans a revolution, reflected her own struggle with being transgender. In an interview with The Wrap, she said:
“Like Sonmi, there are people who will spit on me, want to lynch me, want to crucify me,” she said.
Wachowski continued by saying that she hoped by being more vocal about her struggles, she could help contribute to the changing of attitudes:
“I am interested in engaging with the world, hopefully in a way that makes some people not as afraid of people like me or view people like me as these others who aren’t as human as them or different than them,”
Lana, along with brother Andy, are the Wachowskis, the directors of The Matrix trilogy, who were notoriously guarded when it came to interviews.
Surrounding Cloud Atlas, and recent events, Ms Wachowski has become much more open about talking in interviews, particularly about her time transitioning.
She came out as transgender earlier this year, and said earlier this week that she almost committed suicide as a young adult because of her identity struggles. She said:
“People are freaked out by GLBT people,” she said. “They’re angry about my gender or my life or the way I inhabit the world the same way that Hugo [Weaving] as Mephi feels that Sonmi is a threat to his natural order in the world. So it’s a weighty choice to do this, but I think… I hope it’s worth it.”
The film, Cloud Atlas, which has been described by critics as “gender-bending”, was co-directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and is based on a book by David Mitchell.
It stars Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant and Susan Sarandon, who all play multiple characters, crossing racial and gender lines, and features multiple time periods.
