Watch The Valley For Free

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I've seen thousands of movies. I searched for this one for decades, finally found it, struggled a lot within myself to find just the right frame of mind to start it, and have just finished watching it.. ~ * ~ .It's truly difficult to find words to express what a masterpiece, what a gem this is. Seductive, upsetting, inspiring, liberating, mind-boggling, a catalyst for direct immersion into the Otherness; the Dreamtime.It provides opportunities to get a taste of total and complete absence of a sense of self, both the kind that's embedded in protean, archetypal ways of being AND that which is the goal of contemporary "civilized" humans who are struggling to deconstruct and shed their social and personal conditioning in order to experience the freedom of Being that's free from the dysphoric awareness of being we are trained to carry with us throughout our lives."Obscured by Clouds" can only be appreciated if one watches with an open heart. It's only then that you can experience the way in which the movie can hold your mind's attention toward a point, a quest, an enigma, and suddenly flood your senses with totally unexpected torrents of fragments, messages, entire sequences from natural existence; from the Other Way; and from the Transbeyond - all at the same time.The movie itself is both the journey and the Valley. Homer and Cavafis (the poets) would have probably embraced director Barbet Schroeder without a moment's hesitation.. ~ * ~ .Please contact me if you'd like to discuss this; I'd like to write a longer review if there's interest.Thanks, Petros

***Contains Spoilers*** Some people who watch this film my not like it if they did not live through the Hippie subculture as I did. This film is a celebration of the free love and drop out mentality that many hippies craved. Also, there is free use of drugs along with some mild sex throughout the film. A young woman of the classic middle class comes into contact with some French versions of hippies while shopping for feathers in New Guinea hinterland. They go on a journey of sexual and cultural discovery among the primitive tribesmen of the region. The young lady is slowly freed from the mentality of restrictiveness to a sexually liberated and open state of mind. The film progresses slowly to the eventual discovery of "The Valley", their own hope of a Shangri-La. There the film ends abruptly leaving the viewer to supply his own ending to the story. This movie is about hippies on drugs and was meant to be viewed by hippies on drugs. In our new world of anti-drug mentality it may sound horrid to suggest that, but we must be charitable and remember that the film world of the late 60's and 70's was very liberal on those issues by our standards. This is a very good and enjoyable erotic film about freedom and that is how it should be relished.But then again, maybe a bunch of stoned people without a clue got together and decided to make a movie, and this was the result.

I saw this film at the Plaza in New York City around 1981. I went to hear the Floyd music but I quickly became so engrossed that I forgot about the music. Determined to travel to the mysterious valley that is always obscured from the air by clouds, a group of Caucasians cross New Guinea. They meet isolated tribes (NOT African - this is New Guinea, remember), experience love and loss, discover themselves, etc. And I thought the ending was wonderful. A little Easy Rider, a little Sorcerer, a lot of atmosphere and style. Naturalist-docu-fiction. Unique and unforgettable.

This movie belongs to a class of movies, obscured by time, which are more portraits than stories. They seem to be made by people without any particular cinematic talent, just a desire to put free love on the screen. The Valley portrays a life of free love and tropical travel. The plot, while present, takes its time advancing. Viewers of a good movie feel attached to the characters, hope anxiously that they do or receive what they should. We felt more attached to the bit characters and spent more time hoping that more Pink Floyd music would reach our ears than that the characters would reach the valley. The soundtrack (Obscured By Clouds) is well worth purchasing, though.