SOURCE: “Fulfilled by the Folly of the City,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4,894, January 17, 1997, p. 15.

In the following review, Pizzichini links Beyond the Clouds thematically, narratively, and stylistically to Antonioni’s earlier films.

It is fourteen years since Michelangelo Antonioni’s last film, Identification of a Woman; now, at the age of eighty-four, he has completed Beyond the Clouds, a kind of final reckoning, in which the veteran director, though wheelchair-bound and unable to speak since his stroke in 1985, addresses the chilling ennui of his earlier work—and moves beyond it. Based on autobiographical pieces (published as Quel bowling sul Tevere in 1983), the film’s four stories recall unsuccessful relationships. As a concession to the film’s backers, Beyond the Clouds has been made with Wim Wenders’s assistance. His contribution is a series of linking episodes that feature John Malkovich as a nameless film director who, camera...