A Thousand Clouds of Peace

A very, very, very slow-moving, aimless movie about a distressed, drifting young man. Not sure who was more lost - the flat characters or the audience, nearly half of whom walked out.

Attempting artiness with black & white and clever camera angles, the movie disappointed - became even more ridiculous - as the acting was poor and the plot and lines almost non-existent. Very little music or anything to speak of. The best scene in the movie was when Gerardo is trying to find a song that keeps running through his head. He goes to a used record store to buy it for his lover and has to sing the song for two sales clerks before they find the album. Cute scene gave promise, but it went downhill from there. The rest of the movie lacks art, charm, meaning... If it's about emptiness, it works I guess because it's empty. Wasted two hours.

"A Thousand Clouds of Peace" is a low budget Mexican oddity, filmed in grainy black-and-white, that has the look and feel of an "art film" stamped all over it. It is a largely nonverbal tale of a 17-year old named Gerardo who, having just been dumped by his boyfriend, now spends his days and nights wandering around the city in a desultory daze, trying to come to terms with his loneliness and despair.

"A Thousand Clouds of Peace" is definitely an acquired taste, but a person who opens himself up to the beauty of its images and the pervasiveness of its mood may find himself intrigued - if not exactly mesmerized - by the experience. The film consists mainly of Gerardo staring soulfully either into the distance or directly into the camera, but Juan Carlos Ortuno creates such a brooding presence that we actually find ourselves touched by the universality of his character's plight. By providing little in the way of drama, dialogue and character interaction, writer/director Julian Hernandez gives the film the simplified form of a parable, turning it into a study of heartbreak and unrequited love, but one stripped of all the usual distractions and clutter.

Dreamlike in its imagery and pacing, "A Thousand Clouds of Peace" will remind you of any number of European art films from the 1960's. Take that as either a recommendation or a warning, depending on your own personal taste.

I nearly fell asleep during a screening of this. Of a boring story that seems to go on forever, it follows several days in the life of a male prostitute who falls in love with one of his tricks. After a heated affair, the trick leaves a long letter explaining why they cannot be together and how they must go on their separate ways.

The male prostitute then goes on a downward self-destructive spiral trying to find his "one true love", repeatedly returning to the same places they frequented, looking for more clues or signs as to where he may locate his love.

In the meanwhile, he hooks up with one ugly guy (who I thought was also a male prostitute), a gay basher, and some guy who ends up having a "three-second sexual intercourse session" with him in a back alley.

It never ceases to amaze me how films STILL portray random sex acts as scenes that can take place in a brief matter of seconds, such as in this case where the trick barely has his pants unbuckled before thrusting three times and miraculously experiencing orgasm!

All of these random encounters end with the sexual partner asking him to call them, to which he discards their telephone numbers.

There is a brief side-plot involving the main character visiting his busy mother who seems to have no time for his lifestyle. There is also another brief side-plot involving some random conversation with a young woman who has noticed him several times standing on the bridge from her window. And there is also one more brief side-plot involving him showing the letter to a male acquaintance, but the audience is not advised of his relation to this person.

None of these things really connect with each other, only to show us how lost and confused this young man really is. He seems to be living life like a ghost. There was one good scene in the entire movie that involved him rummaging through a yard sale looking for a particular record with the world's saddest song on it.

Otherwise, this movie just seems to go on forever. Filmed in black and white, it may seem very dreamlike, but sitting in the theater for nearly two hours watching this drivel will resemble something more like a nightmare!

I found the ending to be confusing as I wasn't quite sure whether the young man had died and gone to heaven? That would have been a nice pay off to end the misery that both audience and the main character had to endure in this meaningless tripe. But seeing as this is an "independent film", movies with endings like these are supposed to encourage you to "use your imagination".

For those of you who are seeking out nudity, there are only brief scenes and most of them are filmed in such a way that anything suggestive are artfully concealed within the shadows. In other words, don't waste your time with this one.

My Rating - 2 out of 10

It's astonishing that some people saw this as art. We saw it as a poorly filmed (shaky hand-held camera and all), (generally) badly acted, unscripted mess that seemed more like a high school film project with the kids experimenting in black & white film making. Injecting mounds of poetry in place of a story does not an art film make. When we watched this in the theatre, people were starting to have fits of the giggles (us included) at the endless stupidity of this self-indulgent, meandering mess. And believe me, it does seem endless. Had we finished our candy and popcorn, we too would have walked out of the theatre with the other two dozen people who packed up and left looking for something more interesting to do!

Looks like film noir and Bergman. Plays like Lynch. Amazing looking and sounding film. Pretentious? Yes. Did I understand it? Not really. Does that matter? Not a jot. A beautiful, haunting, melodic flow of images and ideas.

But without the excessive artyness, with the plot clearer and more attention to characters, or to put it another way, with a director half as good as its cinematographer, it could have been amazing all over.