BEYOND THE CLOUDS

Name: BEYOND THE CLOUDS
Item: BEYOND THE CLOUDS
Author: Review

"Four Stories of Meaningless Attraction"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

Michelangelo Antonioni’s BEYOND THE CLOUDS is admittedly a success of cinematography, but a failure as a story of any substance. In fact, it has four stories based on a collection of short stories by Antonioni that have no thematic cohesion. The stories are told in a unique way unfolding through the memories of a movie director played by John Malkovich. He is tired from completing a film but is compelled to search for ideas for the next one. As he journeys through France and Italy, his memories trigger the four different tales, all fueled by physical attraction and all bizarre.

Although the nudity in BEYOND THE CLOUDS is handled artistically, it is nonetheless unnecessary to the story. One keeps looking for the point to the stories but it never reveals itself. Antonioni’s attempt to portray desire and passion gets lost among the meaninglessness of the individual stories. The photography is the best part of this movie, creating moods with creative camera angels but adding little to story structure. Though certainly a skilled craftsman, with many years of experience behind him, the help from younger German director Wim Wenders did not seem to help.

Content:

(H, Ro, Pa, L, SS, NNN, A, D) Humanist worldview with romantic elements comprised of hedonistic passion, 3 obscenities; no violence; depicted fornication; full female nudity & rear male nudity; alcohol use; and, smoking.