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List Price: $29.99 | | Label: Image Entertainment
Salesrank: 92322
Released: August 22, 2000 |
| Our Price: $149.95 |
| Used Price: $71.65 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Eighty-six year old Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni is considered one of the greatest living directors, his prolific career spanning a fifty year period. He recently received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement and the American Film Institute's highest honor. Image Entertainment is proud to present the DVD of Antonioni's latest work, the European success "Beyond the Clouds." Told from the dreamlike perspective of a wandering film director, the movie weaves four stories of love and lust, inspired by Antonioni's writings about enigmatic, unrequited or unresolved relationships. Set in several beautiful European locales such as Portofino and Paris, the film uses striking compositions, sensuous shots of lovely nudes and a moving musical score (featuring Van Morrison, U2 and Brian Eno) to create a radiant meditation on love and desire. The film is co-directed by Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club, Wings of Desire) and boasts an eclectic international cast including John Malkovich, Sophie Marceau, Irene Jacob, Jean Reno and Vincent Perez.
Beyond The Clouds Reviews:
Antonioni's Visual Poem 
2009-10-04 - Michelangelo Antonioni was well into his 80s when he directed this film (with some assistance from German director Wim Wenders). Beyond the Clouds, more than any film I can name off the top of my head, equates to a visual poem.
The film, released in 1995, is typical Antonioni; meditative, non-linear. With a script he co-wrote with Wenders and others, the film weaves a hypnotic series of scenes that don't necessarily amount to any sort of story. Instead, Antonioni allows the camera to simply glance at something, linger for a moment, and then look away. This sense of disconnection makes this film a majestic achievement in many ways.
John Malkovich plays a film director who brings these stories together. In the first one, Silvano meets a beautiful woman named Carmen, they instantly fall in love, and then don't see each other for two years. Later, the director meets a young woman who reveals she was acquitted for stabbing her father 12 times. The other stories involve infidelity, irony, and circumstance but center around one common theme: love. Everything centers around love in one way or another. Antonioni doesn't seem to want people to suspend their disbelief for this film, but rather embrace this film as a piece of cinema.
Beyond the Clouds is a thoughtful, observant film that can only really be described as a visual poem. The effect of the film's poetry is only enhanced by the beautiful score (by Van Morrison and U2, among others) and art direction.
While not without shades of the erotic, Antonioni chooses romanticism over eroticism for this film and the poetic simplicity he applies to these gentle, fleeting scenes is what makes this film compelling. Many viewers will be turned off by the slow pacing of this film and it is a movie that requires patience from the viewer. You've been warned!
Call it what you will, but you'd be hard-pressed not to admit that this film has an ethereal beauty to it. It's not Antonioni's masterwork, but it is a rather remarkable cinematic achievement that can really show someone the ways that cinema can exist as an artistic, beautiful medium.
GRADE: B
Average Antonioni... 
2009-04-28 - 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.
A Real Piece of Art
2009-03-14 - 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.
The most beautiful women ever to appear in a single film
2007-06-23 - 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.
An Extreme Film: Lovelorn, Dispair, and Humanity 
2007-01-27 - Wow. I have never witnessed a movie so beautiful and haunting. It really feels like you are there, in the city, witnessing the lives of these amazingly human characters. The huge buildings really are like old "bones growing out from under the fog," and inside this vast timeless landscape are the humans' who's hopes are infinite yet must face the harsh limits of their own flaws and weaknesses. These beautiful love stories evoked a strange and transcendeding feeling from my heart. I can't really put words on it. They were real, surreal, and eternal. There is a indescribable and unseen dimension to everything in this film: the lives of those living inside the great buildings, the enigmatic little streets covered with fog and rain.
Watch this movie alone and with the lights off. I promise you will experience something hauntingly beautiful that will stay with you for a lifetime.
