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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Antonioni paradox: Ultra-slow films I can't get enough of, September 12, 2000
Here's another Antonioni masterpiece (assisted and with a few connecting scenes directed by Wim Wenders) that will be rediscovered again and again as soon as enough people see it on DVD. I saw it a few months ago when it ran for the first time (even in metropolitan movie capital L.A.!) for a couple of weeks and then disappeared (art house audiences seem to have opted for their own special territory, where older favorites like Antonioni and Resnais are only welcome as occasional curiosities). At first I was disappointed, thought the pace unbearably boring (how can anyone sit through this thing more than once?), and that the man had lost a chance (for years Antonioni had found it difficult to find financing) at an advanced age to add another masterpiece to his canon. But, remembering how I had reacted negatively to "Blow-Up" and "The Passenger" and later completely reversed my opinion, I refused to pass judgment until I had seen it again. I went back th!e next day and I SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SURPRISED that the film kept pulling me in, making me aware of things I had thought about and lost track of throughout my life. These were the same truths exposed for the first time some forty years ago in 'L'Aventurra,''La Notte,' 'L'Eclisse,' and 'Red Desert,' transposed to a contemporary setting, and they were just as fascinating as ever! The slow, drawn-out meditative moods, the famous "alienated tone," and above all, the subtle comedic subtext underlying everything-I just couldn't get enough. The (Wenders directed but deeply Antonioni influenced)scene with Malkovich sitting on the fancy colored swings on the windswept beach, sand swirling by, with the weather so beautifully silver-skied, and the Eno/U2 track in the background flowing through at just the shot's rhythm--this had been my favorite on first viewing: it still was, but now the whole film was almost as great. What a strange phenomenon, that special brand of 'complex s!implicity' or 'invisible complex' which Antonioni's eye alone seems to be able to pick up and communicate (and influence Wenders to do like-wise when collaborating). "Beyond the Clouds" looks at first glance like a soft-core porno of some kind and it does feature plenty of sex (the maddeningly gorgeous Sophie Marceau alone should be enough to distract the males in the audience), but make no mistake about it, its sensibility is timeless and unmistakably Antonioni's to its core; however, you will not sense to what a profound extent, until you have seen the film a few times and got used to its rhythm (I saw it 4 times before they pulled it and would've gone back for more). If this film had been promoted right and people guided to a certain extent as to how to approach it, I have no doubt it would have succeeded on the art house circuit like most of Antonioni's '60s films. But the '60s are no more and the film will have to find its audience on letterboxed DVD (I'll never f!orgive the morons who released those cut-up versions of 'Zabriskie Point' and 'The Passenger' on video) some 5 years after its initial release. I urge all film nuts general or esoteric to see 'Beyond the Clouds' and add a touch of magic to the tragic.
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29 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
romantic stories in beautiful places, June 13, 2000
I love this movie so much that I will be the first one in line to buy the DVD. For those of you who love well-designed plots, like those of Manon of the Spring or Sixth Sense, you may be disappointed by the stories in this movie. All four stories were not linked in any meaningful way. The first story was about a young man, who secretly fell in love with a beautiful young woman (Inès Sastre) that he met in a street. It was the kind of Platonic love in which he loved her spiritually but feared that physical attachment would destroy this relationship. It reminds me of John Cage and Nelle Porter in the Ally McBeal show. Only they were more innocent. The second story was a bizarre one. John Malkovich and Sophie Marceau were two mysterious strangers who met in a small shop on the shore of a beautiful lake (or sea?). They felt connected in some way that was not easily understandable to the audience. The third story was about a love triangle in a big city. This story was all so familiar and boring too. In the last story, a beautiful girl (Irene Jacob) was walking to a church. A young man volunteered to walk with her in the rain. They talked about life and love. When the girl got back home, she told the boy that she was going to enter a convention the day after. The boy left in despair. Obviously, the girl was kind of lost too. What I love most about this movie is the beautiful places. I love the foggy street and cozy hotel of Ferrara, the beach shops and ivy-covered walls of Portofino, and the streets of Paris in rainy days. These places look so beautiful and lovely that I just want to jump in the screen like the waitress in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Sastre, Marceau and Jacob look phenomenal in this movie. Reno (well known as Leon in The Professional) and Malkovich have good performance too. When Malkovich plays a serious movie director and observes people's life, it's more funny than serious. People may feel lost in the clouds after seeing this movie. Actually, this is not a down-to-earth or sci-fi Hollywood movie at all. These stories happen everyday in the world, when I was watching it, I felt I knew these characters all along. Antonioni did not intend to teach you about the meaning of life, love, desire, and betrayal, on the contrary, he tried to help you to experience or to understand your experience through the eyes of the camera. It works fine with me.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Antonioni does Antonioni, June 29, 2001
This is a beautiful set of short films stitched together into one film with Malkovich as a stand in for the wandering director (MA) himself. Malkovich wanders through Italy and France dreamily, gazing, imagining scenarios that spin into tales of now-familiar Antonioni style and presentation. Wim Wenders help cut this film and certainly had a hand in its direction but one has to say, after all, that Antonioni is responsible. He is, like De Kooning doing De Kooning, doing Antonioni. Some of the actors are also straining to do Antonioni and it shows. Despite these shortcomings the handful of scenarios are haunting and the slow cadence of the unraveling of these lives is hypnotic. The film opens with a gorgeous scene of the director (Malkovich) driving through the fog-shrouded streets of Ferrara (one supposes) with strangers drifting through the fog. This seems the pictorial metaphor for the film as a whole.
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