FTV 111 Film Journal

Beneath Clouds



Country : Australia
Year : 2002
Director : Ivan Sen
Length : 90 mins
Language : English




Awards : Best Direction (AFI), Best Cinematography (AFI), First Movie Award (Berlin International Film Festival), New Talent Award (Berlin International Film Festival).

Synopsis : Two teenagers travel to Sydney together for different reasons.

Critical Comment :
Beneath Clouds is about differences. Lina and Vaughn are already different in skin color but the real differences are much deeper. The cultural principles on certain issues and how different cultures have different persepctive about the same issues.

Beneath Clouds addresses these issues and by using the convention of a road movie, it seeks to build an understanding that divides both whites and aborigines. While a road movie explores the theme of self discovery, Beneath Clouds is more about discovering each other. From the treatment of women (the aborigine who slapped his wife and Vaugh rescuing Lina from the white boys), the law and justice is served (Vaughn the fugitive is hunted down by the police) and the question of land ownership (when Lina and Vaughn trespass into the white farmer's cornfield), these issues are addressed in Beneath Clouds.

The heart of the matter in Beneath Clouds, I feel is how Lina and Vaughn express their views about each other. They have negative impression about each other and this is the very thing that has divided them as race and culture. It is only through journeying together that Lina and Vaughn have built an understanding for each other. The distrust that Vaughn has against whites as invaders on their land that the farmer didn't deserve to call him a thief while Lina calls the aborigine who worked on the cotton farm like slaves. The question of respect in which case started off with a lack thereof but later grows between Lina and Vaugh is perhaps the message that wants to be delivered in Beneath Clouds.

Only through understanding and respect, can Lina and Vaughn could overcome their differences of race and culture. Although it is debatable that while Lina and Vaughn have a common purpose of going to Sydney and that they share the same question of heritage, but I believe that not only is respect and understanding important, it is the idea of finding a common cause that can bring people together.

Readings :

1. Walker, Renay (2002) 'Blood on the Tracks: Beneath Clouds', Metro Magazine No 133, 13-15. It ties Beneath Clouds with a road movie. Most of the points made by this article are agreeable and applicable when watching this film. It gives some interesting insights about the film and how it reads the film.
2. O'Shaugnessy, Micheal (1994) "Promoting Emotion'' : Feelings, Film Studies and Teaching or Understanding Films; Understanding Overselves', Metro Magazine, January, No 97, 44-48. This article tells how important it is to have emotions when reading a film. I believe in what this article is saying that whenever we are appreaciating an aesthetic whether (especially) film, photographs or literature, it is the ability for ourselves to feel aesthetically about how the message is being delivered to us that is the essence of appreciating film as a medium. Film is like any other works of art that must be appreciated as well as studied. By allowing our emotions to guide our reading of film, a greater understanding of the discourses in film can be attained. Nevertheless, a balanced approach must be made between both methods of reading film. From an aesthetic point of view, it can blind us from seeing the real issue or how those issues are expanded into our society. On the other hand, a purely academic view of film would fundamentally fail to perceive film as a creative medium that does not allow us to feel what is being addressed in the film other than the most surface or obvious issues.
3. Stam, Robert (2000) 'Post Cinema: Digital Theory and the New Media' and 'The Pluralization of Film Theory', Film Theory: An Introduction, Malden, Mass. & Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 314-327, 327-330. This reading is very difficult to comprehend for its magnitude of the future after cinema. However, it has pointed out important elements that likely describing about the cinematic gaze and the psychoanalysis that runs behind our vision of film. It feeds our voyueristic nature that film and cinema is able to provide. The pluralization of film theory also gives me an idea of how diverse film theory is that can run from the many different aspects, each equally important but not comprehensive. I believe this should help in my readings of films and that these theories should be taken into consideration when deriving meaning from these readings.