The perfect description for what this film incites within us.

     There’s little to say about a great film - except that it’s great. And ‘Beyond the
Clouds’ is great.  It’s the kind of film that’s very dreamlike (in it’s colors, tones,
interactions) and one in which everyone in it seems to be a philosopher. This is not a
turn-off. In films I’ve seen, yes - that can get irritating. In Antonioni’s film, every word is
worth savoring and each character says it as such. The weight of the film’s content is
known by all - and this can be felt in all it’s corridors. ‘Beyond the Clouds’ is just flat-out
captivating.

     It’s a film-within-a-film type of ploy. Made up of five stories - it’s not broken up
(like Altman, they flow through and into each other). It starts with a film director
(Malkovich) thinking of his next project, which is to be the story of two lovers who see
each other infrequently - but remain in love. This circles into a story of Malkovich’s
actual involvement in which he becomes bewitched by a sales clerk in a clothing store,
seemingly by fate, and has a torrid - if short - love affair with her. Which scurries into the
next story about a man who cheats on his wife and how his wife leaves him - which
melds into her trying to rent an apartment from a man whose wife has just left him - and
isn’t sure he doesn’t altogether hate the notion when the renter shows up. Following this
is the story, very touching, (as we come back to Malkovich’s apartment to wrap things
up) of a man who is smitten with a very religious girl whom he follows to church and
falls for. This short description is necessary. The film is just as whimsy and beautiful - if
occasionally flighty - in it’s presentation. But moreover, it’s the effect of the film that
stays with us.

     The complexities buried underneath the simplicity are something, too. The film
attacks the massive themes of : sensuality, the boundaries of men and women, touch,
silence, the balance of elements within nature, words, coincidence, bodies, space,
enslavement and persistence. The film is full to the brim with odd little bursts of life : it
is the very embodiment of the image-taker. It casts a mythical shadow on reality,
encompassing all that is real about it - and nearly lifting it into a magical transcendence
of fiction. It’s in limbo. It never quite captures the toil of our everyday needs, the ones
that romance shackles us within; and it never quite captures the heightened satisfaction
of concocted flirtation and seduction. Like one character says : “It’s stuck here in the
fog”. And in a film like ‘Beyond the Clouds’, that’s just where it wants to be. And just
where it belongs. It takes it’s time to observe people and, in turn, they become art. This is
an introspective, beautifully written and occasionally perfect film.

     Be sure to leave some time for pondering and walking around after you see
‘Beyond the Clouds’. It leaves you with such a wondrous feeling - the kind of feeling you
know has an ending - but that you’ll pay to remain in for a time. You’ll discuss it with
friends, later, but you’ll be unable to recall it. How effortless the film’s hold is. How
wonderful. My feeling is that it’s sort of a heaven - when films do this to you - it’s a vast
world that ‘Beyond the Clouds’ merely scratches the surface of. It’s a wonderful world
that only the cinema can provide. And it’s a world I hope to inhabit for eternity when I
leave my little shell of a body. It’s a narcotic swell, it is.