raineater777 While it got much better towards the end (better acting, image composition and both tonal and chromatic contrast), i can say that Beyond the Clouds made me say this : "i don't like Antonioni". I may be an ignorant, but please give me the benefit of a doubt about this film. The beginning is absurd (as are situations throughout the whole movie). It seems that everybody does more thinking than feeling ("What if i told you i fell in love with you?" to which the reply comes pretty fast "it is like lighting a candle in an already lightened room". Seriously. Would you say that if you were told this? It's not that i don't believe that two complete strangers could fall madly in love, but .. it happens so seldom that they bring proof to the saying "it only happens in movies" or better yet "in Antonioni's movie".We see character connections we don't need (like the girl from the cinema and the hotel manager looking suspiciously - camera zoom on the face- at the new client) and all in all, the movie is filled with intricacies that aren't necessary, making it like a fully lit Christmas-time shop window, out of which you like everything, but you wouldn't buy it all even if you could.All thanks on the camera movement - steadycam i suppose, crane, aso aso, but i would like to point out that we don't need to see the DOP's height when filming actors that are shorter/taller than him/her.As a final conclusion, the stiffness of the dialogs, the slow pacing of the editing, the (deliberate?) "year 1 at film academy" errors like jumping over the ax between the characters or filming the airplane's left wing and presenting it as a subjective image for the character sitting on the right side of the plane seem ridiculous and make me give this movie a 6 out of 10.

jrphelan I was stunned by this film. I have been renting Antonioni's films/rediscovering them, and this film showed me the climax and fruits of his 50 years of directing. What an eye for setting, color, and detail! I have never seen such visual beauty and poetry filmed before. I had to stop after the first story and hold back the tears. Yes, beauty moves me, like it moved Keats to write Ode on a Grecian Urn. This movie is made for the mature, emotionally and intellectually, audience. Those hoping to see physical action and soap opera will be disappointed. I will have to see this film several times before I can truly appreciate it and judge it. This film should be required viewing for all cinematographers and directors.Possibly a truly great film, on the order of Kurosawa's Dreams.

Pete Davis How can this movie possibly have such a high rating? When it comes to the director, I'll admit being ignorant of his past works, and maybe they are fine works. This was not a fine work by any stretch.The script is terrible. The acting is horrible. You can't blame the actors, though. They don't have anything to work with. Every character acts like a psychotic stalker or a schizophrenic. The dialog is entirely nonsensical.To quote Mark Twain from "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", simply replace "Deerslayer" with "Beyond the Clouds":1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive some where. But the "Deerslayer" tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the "Deerslayer" tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the "Deerslayer" tale to the end of it.All of this applies to "Beyond the Clouds". The characters don't act like human beings, they don't talk like human beings. There seems to be no real story to tell.As far as I can tell, it seems to me that the director simply wanted to see some beautiful actresses naked and came up with an excuse.Don't waste your time, that's all I can say.

mifunesamurai A wonderful cast thrown into modern mystical romances for the intellectual grown ups. Yes, they too need a love story to stir those hidden urges without the Hollywood fluff. This all under the masterful direction of Antonioni and Wenders who both love to pin his characters in exotic locations and have them dwarfed by the surroundings with long wide shots. It is great to see that there is lust in the mid-life crises sector.