I find this movie really quite bad, but at the same time interesting. Its worth a watch if this is the type of thing your interested in.

Essentially this film is a Wenders film masquerading as an Antonioni film, and while I have the highest respect for Antonioni, I really don't have any interest in seeing any more Wenders films than I already have.

Antonioni was ostensibly the director of the film, the only issue being that he was rendered mute from a stroke, so Wenders had to do all the real directing for him. It is to be assumed that Antonioni signed off on the film at the end, but Wenders has supposedly said that "Antonioni blinked, and I knew what it meant."

As a film about film the movie is really quite interesting (despite being poorly done), the essential plot is that a director (played by Malkovich) walks through cities, letting things happen to him, and letting his mind get carried away with stories built off these moments. I think the film really tries to be what film should be, a series of captured moments that have a sort of surreal beauty. The displacement in time, the physical body, the illusory sense of touch, most of all the disconnectedness of events. Film as a medium brings you things out of time, that capture your imagination, that stay with you as a quasi-fictional memory. The film expresses Antonioni's attempts to use film to grab on to the fleeting feeling of living, to deal with all the minor details of being alive. Which is touching coming from a stroke victim.

Unfortunately the film was directed by Wim Wenders.

Buy Beyond the Clouds

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