Cheap Beyond The Clouds (DVD) (Michelangelo Antonioni, Wim Wenders) Price

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Customer Reviews of Beyond The Clouds

Whole Lotta Brooding Goin' On
I think a more apt title for this film would be "Who is John Malkovich and why is he following me?" Leaving that mystery aside, BYC has obvious merits. It's visually evocative and pleasing, as all Antonioni is (though not on the richly symbolic order of L'Avventura or the other films in the "tetralogy"); and from the standpoint of a heterosexual male, you can't beat the triple whammy of Sastre, Marceau and Jacob. Beyond that, however, I found it to be pretentious and overly-ponderous, as if it were a parody of all things bad in foreign films, in the same way that a parody of an American movie would be overproduced with scant character development and an excess of car chases, gunplay, and explosions.

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Cloudscapes form a Great Director
The great Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni spins four dreamy tales into an uneven confection concerning passion and connectivity. Though not as bitter as La Notte or L'Avventura (two of his masterpieces), in this film Antonioni seems more pensive and nostalgic for the tragedy of passing time and lost love. A great cast fills the landscape of lovers trying to connect and passions boiling beneath the surface, some fulfilled, others disappointingly engaged. John Malcovich wanders through the film as a narrator connecting the threads of the four stories (the direction assisted by Wim Wenders due to Antonioni's age and the after effects of a stroke), and the international cast of Peter Weller, Irene Jacob, Vincent Perez, Sophie Marceau and Jean Reno are perfectly tuned in to the director's icy, haunting style. A brief cameo by Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau (stars of La Notte) is touching and sad. This film is a must for Antonioni's fans, his scene composition and camerawork are still among the best of any living director.

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Tschuess to Philadelphia
I believe elmoderno saw some forein films, but it was obviously useless for him. He didn't understand a word in the film. This is the reason why most of Russians laughing at Americans adolescence maximalism and inability to think about and understand really deep and serious European films. They can't even hide their narrow-mindedness, as we can see. Every person can read the texts (it can be texts in the books and in the films and anywhere else as well - all our world is the text for reading and understanding) using some interpretative codes, which he has by force of his education and his environment. So this is not the question of Wim Wenders absolute Genius - this is the problem of personal ability for reading and understanding the meanings which contain the text (the film in this case)!