Customer Reviews

Beyond the Clouds [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

If you speak French or can put up with sub-titles, you will really enjoy this movie. If on the other hand you just want to see God's most beautiful creatures, this is a must see. Not an ounce of silicon in sight. Zalman King eat your heart out. Sophie Marceau's body is the epitome of perfection and everything I had ever fantasized about. Her part is even in English. Even the fact that she was nude with John Malkovich did not detract for her beauty. Sophie is a ten if ever there was one. Chiara Caselli and Inés Sastre are 9.5s. Oh yeah, it is a pretty good story. Several little vignettes are woven together in a sort of Six Degrees of Separation style.

Visually this film is very attractive, with beautiful shots of a lakeside village and very atmospheric shots of alleyways and streets in rain and mist. But when it comes to the actions and motivations of the people in the film I lost patience. I like to believe in and identify with the characters, and in this film I found that impossible. There are four stories and I will mention only two - the two that seems to me the most bizarre and pointless.

The first story stars two extremely good-looking newcomers to the screen (Rossi Stuart & Ines Sastre). He stops his car to ask her the way to the nearest hotel; and, presumably because he is so good-looking, she gives him the name of her hotel. They see each other during the day. and when they retire to their rooms at night across the landing from each other, she lies awake waiting for the knock on the door that never comes. In the morning she leaves early without seeing him. It is two years before they see each other again, and this time their relationship progresses a little further - they get to be naked on the bed together.
But he behaves in a very odd way indeed; for some five minutes he runs his hands over her body within a millimetre of her skin, but without actually touching her. What she thinks is going on as she lies there feeling nothing, is anybody's guess. Then, after five minutes, still without having touched her, he gets up abruptly and without speaking a word, leaves. I ask you; is that the action of a sane man? You wonder why he bothered to take his clothes off if he intended to do so little. She, presumably feeling hurt and frustrated, rushes to the window to see him walking off into the distance. They give each other a feeble wave. End of story. John Malkovich's deep, lugubrious voice-over tells us he behaved in this way either because of folly or pride. Well it was certainly folly and certainly unbelievable.

In the other story, Malkovich's character is attracted to a young woman (Sophia Marceau) he sees in a shop window. He can't take his eyes off her and just stands there entranced. She responds in the same way. He goes into the shop and their mutual and silent fascination continues. I felt uncomfortable for both of them. Was something momentous about to happen? It would seem so and our interest is awakened, our expectations aroused. But no, we are just being led up the garden path.
He sits outside and eventually she joins him. She tells him only one thing about herself; that she has murdered her father by stabbing him twelve times. Malkovich's character shows no surprise and the fact seems irrelevant. They then go to her place and they have sex. But this is not the beginning of some deep and meaningful relationship. Oh no. When he's had his sex he's had enough, and, like the previous male protagonist, he just walks away. Another wretched piece of behaviour and another let down. The point? I wish I new.

This summer I read Nathaniel Dorsky's book "Devotional Cinema" and looked at many of the movies he regards as being capable of getting us in touch with our deeper human nature. Among those mentioned were several Antonioni films that have to do with the relationship between men and women. In "La Notte" of crucial importance to the male writer depicted in the movie is woman as muse.
Antonioni revists this theme in "Beyond the Clouds" as he shows how he goes about the creative process of making a film. The sequence of roles played by the women in the different relationships depicted is fascinating. I suggest watching the movie several times and reading Mr. Dorsky's book to get the most out of this gem.

This film was Antonioni's first after a long hiatus from filmmaking. There are interlinking segments with John Malkovich as a film director that were directed by Wim Wenders, but overall, it's an Antonioni film. While there are some great shots and camerawork, it just felt empty. It's like one reviewer said: it was "Antonioni doing Antonioni". I kept looking for something profound and worthwhile, like in Michelangelo's masterpieces from L'avventura to Blow-Up (and The Passenger), but usually came away empty. Aside from one story with a woman who reveals to her lover that she's about to become a nun, none of the stories generate much interest, and Wenders's segments are incredibly pretentious, with ponderous, condescending narration. The film is worth checking out if you dig Antonioni (Marcello Mastrioanni's segment is quite good), but overall, it's a rather staid exercise with some thoughtful, Antonioniesque moments.

This film is a genuine piece of art. If you are looking for Hollywooden action or a love story with a happy ending, then pass it up. If you can appreciate art for art's sake then you are going to love this masterpiece. Watch this film without trying to figure out what is taking place with each scene or segment, or without expectation and you will be rewarded with the brilliance of imagery and beauty. It has great architectural scenes, nice city and countryside vistas, and gorgeous nude women. It is very slow paced, but sped up with choppy editing. From what I gathered from this movie the director is creating the image that mankind is alone and lonely no matter who or what he chooses to be with - his imagination, beautiful potential lovers, beautiful lovers, beautiful wives and mistresses or God and the Church. If you cannot appreciate this viewpoint while disagreeing with it, then I would again suggest you pass on it. Certainly if you agree with this viewpoint you will love it because the director paints it starkly and brilliantly. You need to watch the whole movie and maybe even contemplate it for awhile after viewing it to absorb the impact and genius of it. Many minutes of this film are spent with characters walking without speaking, standing looking silently, etc. If you fast forward just to get to the nude scenes, which are definitely worth watching, you will miss the impact of the movie. There is a narrator who wanders through lives and cities tying all segments together, whose narration seems to be mumbling more to himself than narrating to the viewers. He too is searching, ostensibly and otherwise. Once again, if you like art for art's sake I think you will appreciate this, otherwise, I doubt it.

As an avid fan of foreign cinema, I had hoped for far more from this film. While I enjoy savoring slow, brooding, elliptical films (Kieslowski's films largely populate my favorites list), "Nuages" simply didn't deliver. The European locales (and various actresses) in the film are frequently gorgeous and beautifully filmed, but precious little is done with this promising milieu.

Not only do the stories lack depth and interest, the characters/actors are unengaging and even obtrusive. Everyone floats about with this detached, deer-in-the-headlights gaze, mouthing deliberately obscure, overwrought lines that might have come from the pen of some turtleneck-clad, undergraduate philosophy major. There were several moments of unintended humor, when the wearing-my-angst-on-my-sleeve bit crossed the ridiculousness threshold, and left my wife and I laughing aloud. Where Kieslowski's films indirectly but insistently pull you into the urgencies of his protagonists lives, this film opts for the unsubtle; some of these characters might as well be carrying placards noting "I'm Complex!" "I'm emotionally haunted!" and the like. The one near-exception to this observation was the final vignette, featuring the understated but luminous Irene Jacob.

I found myself wishing that the characters would leave me alone to explore the beguiling backdrops against which these pallid vignettes unfold. I don't think that was the director's intent.

Director Michelangelo Antonioni has authored many outstanding films as "Blowup" (1966) and "Zabriskie Point" (1970) or more controversial ones as "The Night" (1961) and "Eclipse" (1962). All of them are refined aesthetical "oeuvres d'art" and at the same time they delivered some "message".
Director Wim Wenders has produced also some interesting film pieces as "Paris, Texas" (1984) and "Wings of Desire" Aka "The Sky over Berlin" (1987).

From the combined efforts of both of them I was expecting a "major". Unfortunately is not the case here.
The movie tries to depict the "creation process" of a film director. It presents four short stories of male-female encounters. Possibly they occur in the Directors imagination and are triggered by surrounding environment. They are unrelated among them and, at least to my perception, they do not have any strong coherence.

The sights are great: misty roads in amazing Italian towns; shops bordering a gorgeous lake; seaside views; light and shadows combined in exquisite photogram. Almost every bit of the film may be considered a visual joy.

For males delight nude scenes of Sophie Marceau, Ines Sastre and Chiara Caselli are shown gracefully. Alas for the ladies, only John Malkovitch "derriere" is shown.

Original music score by Bono and Adam Clayton as U2 is also very good.

It is a film that brings to memory more successful examples of "intellectual `60es" filmography, without reaching their deepness.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.