Beneath Clouds (2003)

Best movie ever!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Enough to say that I did not go looking for this movie.....it found me and transfixed me while I was channel surfing....and watch it I did - enthralled by the atmospheric capture.Recently I was traveling in outback rural Australia and so many memories stirred of places that I knew in childhood ..... One pub or store little towns with clapboard houses and the poorest of the poor both socially and economically and the dreams one dared not dream as a young person...This movie was excellent in so many ways.....following Lena home I was almost shocked to enter her life at home....I knew families that lived like that, watching the teenagers hanging out together....the memories surfaced. I did not ask anything from the plot....there is no point asking when you find circumstances like this to negotiate but there was enough reality for me that I came looking today to read more about the movie, the actors and the producers etc - job well done ...the discomfort of rural youth well captured along with he rural magic

Firstly, I am shocked at all the positive reviews for this film. On a superficial level it is a fine film; technically very strong and well-paced. However, the film is full of so much contradictory stereotyping and half-baked social commentary that it falls flat on its face. The acting is also terribly wooden, and I doubt I can find the kindness within myself to call it 'understated'. The music comes in when any small drama occurs, and the audience is pushed to care for two characters who really never become likable because they are played by two blank-faced actors.I am particularly intrigued as to why an Aboriginal director would want to perpetuate the stereotype of his people - Drugs? Guns? Tattoos? Domestic abuse? Teenage pregnancy? Drinking? EVEN an eyepatch? Aren't you going a bit far? And every time director Sen tries to de-construct or analyse this stereotype he ends up reverting back to it (one specific example is when Vaughn spits in the cop's face). The stereotyping of white police is especially brutal - there is not one decent cop around according to this film. In fact, white people in general are not too favourably looked upon. The only nice white person in this film is an old man who gives our two heroes a lift, and possibly the conveniently named "Sean", which gives the Irish-wannabe Lena a little pang.The other white characters try to kidnap Lena or treat Aborigines disrespectfully.The camera-work is often too obvious. A hand-held camera arrives to shake things up whenever an upset occurs. A fight, the threat of violence, sickness - the hand-held camera is there to tell us, "Wow, isn't the situation getting intense!", but after spending so much time establishing a static mood through gratuitous landscape and time-lapse shots of clouds, the hand-held is an obvious symbolic device and director would've done better keeping his style consistent. The use of tracking shots was often very disrupting to the flow of the film as well, except in the last sequence where it is quite effective.But unfortunately by that stage, I couldn't care less what happened to the characters, as they stared blankly at each other 'til the end.The one thing to admire about this film, however, are the good intentions behind it. This movie failed on an emotional engagement level, but for the sheer effort involved in its making, and its technical triumphs, it gets 5/10, which I think is fair.

I was fascinated by the atmosphere of this film. The lots ofclose-ups together with the attracting photography and thesensitive performance of the two young people make this abreathtaking film. The easy-going rhythm of the film feels never as too slow but isinherent to the character of the aboriginals. The soundtrack also gives this film an extra dimension and is veryenjoyable. Together with "rabbit-proof fence" and "picnic at hanging rock" oneof the Australian films which impressed me most.

For a foreign, the language is pretty hard to understand, because they use lot of slangwords.. Well. I liked this film. The aggregate is beautiful and harmony and I think it's categorized as an art film... I'm not sure, but that's what I was told to. The movie is about white girl and black guy, their sad stories and hate which becames to friendship and then love.