The Ultimate Road Movie

The end of the Wim Wenders series shown by the Austin Film Society.

In summary, what I've learned since attending 8 films directed by Wim Wenders is that he is the foremost expert practitioner of the road movie genre and his collaboration with cinematographer Robby Müller leaves several lasting proofs of their fortuitous time spent working together. Alice in den Städten (1974, Wim Wenders), Falsche Bewegung (1975, Wenders), and Im Lauf der Zeit (1976, Wenders) are their road movie trilogy.

The road movie trilogy are examples of the finest in 1970s independent personal filmmaking. They are slow, all revolve around variations of a different central protagonist, with each played by Rüdiger Vogler, and see him embark on a quest of small stakes that end with him alone as he was at the beginning. These 3 films get away with making the most out of the least. Alice in den Städten is about PHILIP WINTER (Vogler) accompanying ALICE (Yella Rottländer) from NYC to Germany and hanging out with her for a couple of days until her mom meets them their. Falsche Bewegung is about WILHELM (Vogler) walking around hoping to find ideas to write a novel about. Im Lauf der Zeit is BRUNO WINTER (Vogler) driving through some small German towns and doing maintenance work on film projectors in some theaters. But it is this foundation that Wenders constructs his artistic identity and style from.

Der amerikanische Freund (1977, Wenders) preserves the aesthetic template and loosely adapts a pulp noir narrative to it. And Paris, Texas (1984, Wenders) surfs the driving force of these 4 films, riding the crest, almost effortlessly enjoying its status as sublime masterpiece.

In Der amerikanische Freund, ZIMMERMAN (Bruno Ganz) is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, which leads him to take some contract work as an assassin. Surprisingly that break from Wenders' trajectory doesn't prevent him from observing sketches of the lives of the film's ensemble. We never feel like we're getting the biographies of Wenders' characters. That is a key to his style.

The difference in Paris, Texas is that we get to find out everything we need to know about TRAVIS (Harry Dean Stanton), JANE (Nastassja Kinski), and HUNTER (Hunter Carson) as the narrative unfolds. That Sam Shepard wrote Paris, Texas as a play that the movie is adapted from may be a contributing factor. Paris, Texas has a purpose. It deals with large stakes and knows it.

I apologize for doing a disservice to you, the reader, by not providing more information about all of the rock 'n' roll found on the soundtracks to all of these movies, or the recurring instances of characters listening to radios in their cars, motels, jukeboxes in diners, live performances, or even that Can recorded Alice in den Städten's original soundtrack.

Another trend I see in these early Wenders/Müller films is the creative character. In Alice in den Städten, Philip Winter is a journalist who rebels against his current assignment, aggravating his editor, by shooting a bunch of photos of a trip he was supposed to write about. Wilhelm's singular pursuit is writing a novel in Falsche Bewegung. Bruno loves cinema, fixes projectors and knows a thing or two about being a projectionist in Im Lauf der Zeit. Zimmerman owns a shop where he makes frames for pictures in Der amerikanische Freund and all of the criminal underworld are battling in the world of counterfeit paintings.

Which leads me to a subtle joke in Paris, Texas. If we know Wenders likes artists as his characters, and we know going into Paris, Texas that it's about America in a lot of ways, what happens when we ask who the artist is in that movie? Well it's Travis' brother WALT (Dean Stockwell) and the first time we see Walt, he's at his job. Taking up the focus of the frame, what else but an enormous black velvet painting-style portrait of Barbra Streisand on a billboard happens to be the day's work at Walt's billboard company. It's like, this bullshit is what Americans have turned art into.

OAR 1.66:1 4K DCP projected Bis ans Ende der Welt (1991, Wenders) screened yesterday in its original 5 hour cut and as theatrical screenings go, felt like it was being shown for the first time.

It wasn't until I was 20 that I saw a subtitled foreign language film. One of the most useful resources I had access to when I moved to Portland, OR when I was 19 was other people's recommendations about what movies to watch next. My cinematic appetite was voracious already. But I'd come from a small town and this was before I used the internet, so I didn't have any idea what I liked or what was out there to watch other than Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino), Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995, Todd Solondz), Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998, Neil LaBute), Celebrity (1998, Woody Allen) and this John Waters VHS box set I had.

One day I went into a chain video rentals store and based on browsing the covers in the foreign section for what must have been an hour at least, I decided on Nóz w wodzie (1962, Roman Polanski) and Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman) as my first foreign movies to watch. Within the next year or so, Fat would lend me his copy of Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa), which first established my respect for his taste in movies. Anyway at this same time I was lent a couple of VHS tapes to watch, highly recommended. The tapes were of The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola) and Bis ans Ende der Welt.

The guy who lent me the tapes was named Matt. He had a girlfriend named Erin who helped open the all-ages club 17 Nautical Miles. Nice guy. I remember he was very enthusiastic about Bis ans Ende der Welt. He said something like dude it was a 5 hour movie about these people going all over the world looking for a camera that records dreams, directed by Wim Wenders, you gotta see it. It sucked. Bad. I hated it. But only now do I realize how much I missed back then watching a version that was missing 3 hours from it, panned & scanned, on a small tube TV.

I haven't seen Matt in 16 years. But he was right. To this day I keep an inventory of movies that are recommended to me personally by all sorts of different people.

Bins ans Ende der Welt is a big movie. It's a road movie, shot by Robby Müller, spans the globe, and explodes with a soundtrack of contemporary 90s rock. Released in 1991, it also boasts the reputation of being the earliest movie to deal with the millennium bug. And its prophecies are spot on while more often than not being alarmingly accurate--CLAIRE TORNEUR (Solveig Dommartin) and SAM FARBER (William Hurt), the pair the film centers on, eventually find handheld digital video viewing devices that they get addictively sucked into, lose all ties with reality, and become nearly catatonic. Take that smartphones.

The first two-thirds or so of Bins ans Ende der Welt is a frenetic cloak and dagger chase where Claire hunts Sam. But the final third is set in Australia, and takes its time closing the story of this sci-fi romance with the care it deserves. And even though Bins ans Ende der Welt is magnificent with its grand scale and huge sci-fi questions, it remains a small character sketch about a couple of romantic types merely chasing their dreams.

PHILIP WINTER (Rüdiger Vogler) returns as a Hammett-type, fedora-sporting private dick who Claire hires in Berlin to help her find Sam. Yes, Rüdiger Vogler's back! Vogler gets a lot of screen time, he's a fundamental part of the group. The whole tale is told in VO by Sam Neil who plays GENE FITZPATRICK, an ex of Claire's who's remained friends with her and is writing a book about the events as they're occurring.

Robby Müller delivers strong work, with his customary blue skies, vast deserts & green countrysides, urban neon jungles, open roads, and all manner of transportation. It all happens so quick though. Another thing I've learned is that say, with Müller's photography for example, it was always there but I had to learn how to see it. Sam is on a mission travelling around the world taking pictures on a special camera that possesses the technology to record an image and play it back to a blind person using brain waves, because he wants to show them to his blind mother in Australia (Jeanne Moreau). The photo Sam takes of his sister is right up there with my favorite frames Müller's ever attained.

The MLS, inspired by Vermeer and his window facing the northern light, falling on the subject's right side, is a poignant reference. It's an acknowledgement of the history of the art of light and its translation to the filmed image in a movie. But it's also a striking counterpoint to most of Müller's best shots, filmed outdoors, without manipulating the lighting, void of life.

The world of high tech gadgetry at play in Bins ans Ende der Welt also includes Winter's GPS software that he uses to track people for his work. But maybe the funniest gag in the movie is the "Bounty Bear." The GPS program shows an animated bear with a Russian hat on-screen while the search is being performed walking around, continuously speaking to the user: I'm searching, searching, still searching, wait a minute, okay, almost there; and again holy crap I can't believe this was made in 1991.

I am so thankful I saw this in a theater finally. There's so much in Bins ans Ende der Welt that makes me want to see it again, but I'll likely never again have the chance to on a theater screen. But I can't complain. Sometimes once is enough.

--Dregs

Irreconcilable Differences

Yet another take on the auteur theory:

Without debating whether films are made by an individual or collectively (thus negating any claims of sole credit), I stubbornly cling to my lifelong collector's compulsion to enjoy memorizing all of a director's works and the year they came out. Am I the only one who gets a kick out of the publicity still of Alfred Hitchcock next to a tower of the screenplays to his films, with the titles printed on the spines, in order?

I thank my lucky stars that theaters have shown retrospectives of individual directors since the 1970s as far as I know. Getting to see a director develop while their skills improve is a joy, whether they seem to make the same thing over and over again or constantly reinvent themselves.

Furthermore, theatrical exhibition provides several advantages. Often a film will only be shown once, so you can't afford to let your attention wander. And sometimes you may never get to see it projected in a theater again, so all you will keep is your own memory of it, like the sweet Celine and Julie find in their mouths after leaving the ghost house and coming back to reality.

But the obvious benefit is the size of the image. Showing certain movies intended for theatrical release on a TV is assault.

The sixth film I've seen shown from the theatrical retrospective of Wim Wenders put on by AFS.

The screen is all black.

Atonal metallic percussion sounds ominously, gently mourn from some place beyond like Native American spirits attached to their homelands. Vibrant red saturated text appears on-screen displaying the brief opening credits. Red will play a strong role in the rest of the film.

A helicopter shot of the closest Texas has come to looking like Monument Valley floats through a desolate canyon with no signs of life, until the next shot links this POV to a hawk in the sky.

A steel guitar strums wobbly, as if drunk or about to pass out from dehydration, just like TRAVIS HENDERSON (Harry Dean Stanton).

Travis walks. His pinstriped suit dusty, ragged. His beard, shabby. He wears a red ball cap and carries a plastic one-gallon jug of water that's just run out. His eyes are haunted. He's barely staying afloat in the wake of a devastating trauma in his past.

Travis slinks in between the wires of a barbwire fence and twists the knob on a spicket. Nothing. Dry. He enters a bar, then collapses on the floor.

WALT (Dean Stockwell), Travis's brother, flies in from LA to help him.

This past weekend I had the fortune of attending both screenings of Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders) from a 4K DCP restored by the Wim Wenders Stiftung in 2014 and projected in its OAR of 1.66:1.

Paris, Texas is the reason I came to this series. It's the one I'd been looking forward to. Many consider it Wenders' best known work. It also won the Palme d'Or at the 1984 Cannes film festival. And some trivia: Claire Denis is first assistant director on Paris, Texas. She is now known for many a great movies in her own directing career beginning with Chocolat (1988, Denis). And Agnès Godard is first assistant camera on Paris, Texas. She will go on to serve as Denis' director of photography on nearly all of her films.

Robby Müller is the cinematographer of Paris, Texas and shows his skilled craftsmanship with every camera set-up in the film. After Walt lands in TX he fills up his rental car at a gas station, with uncorrected fluorescent lights overhead casting green light on him while in the background the sunset is such a deep red one wonders how such a shot was even possible. How was the sky that red?

Terry Malick tells his camera department not to photograph blue skies. Thats' one way. It's understandable that he prefers his movies to feature overcast skies so they don't look, say, too much like a postcard. Paris, Texas opens with blue, often cloudless skies, and commit to that choice anytime there's a daytime exterior (with the exception of a rainstorm shot). Paris, Texas is a cinematography movie, despite my guess that its makers would probably say that their intention was not to distract the audience with the way the images were photographed.

After Walt leaves the doctor's' office where Travis was last seen he leaves in search of him. There's a shot of a blacktop highway that leads to infinity and a shot of a caliche road winding towards a backdrop of mesa. Walt chooses the caliche. Travis walks through green pastures. Some black cows graze. The magnitude of scale is staggering. And somehow Walt pulls up, like it's the most ordinary thing in the world. As Walt looks at Travis he comments: "What the hell happened to you anyway? You look like 40 miles of rough road." This comment not only alludes to the subtext of the previous scene--Walt guesses the rough road will lead him to Travis, which it does. But the comment also describes Harry Dean Stanton's iconic visage.

Stanton as the docile soft-spoken Travis and Stockwell as the kind and gentle Walt's performances are the foundation of the cast. Paris, Texas is serene, but something's at the core of it that is revealed to be a damaging wound that can never be healed. The first half of the movie is Walt finding Travis after he'd been missing for 4 years. Even when Walt finds him Travis refuses to tell him what happened. But it's also Travis finding his son, HUNTER (Hunter Carson).

When Travis gets to Walt's and Hunter walks downstairs, all dressed up, nice white shirt, hair combed, and pauses on the banister, it's the first big moment. We get it. There's no further explanation needed. Hunter says "hi." Travis says "hi." Hunter hasn't seen his dad in four years and he needs some time before he warms up to him. The morning following Travis' arrival he offers to walk his son home after school. Hunter complains to Anne, Walt's wife: "I don't wanna walk home. Nobody walks. Everybody drives." When Hunter gets out of school and sees Travis waiting across the street, he opts for a ride home with one of his school chums instead.

I grew up in South Texas. Nobody walked anywhere. I moved to Portland, OR when I was 19 and stayed in a big house in SE called The Dustbin full of punkers, rockers, DIY artists, Reedies, and intellectuals. All sorts of people passed through. One night there were these 3 guys who were from MN who I thought were fun to hang out with that invited me out for a walk, and I asked where. They told me nowhere. At the time I couldn't understand why someone would walk somewhere for no reason. I asked "how far?" and "when will you be back?" But I went. I think we just walked up Woodstock from 39th to 52nd or past the Plaid Pantry. I'm older now and I love to walk. For no reason. With nowhere in mind.

The same complaint can be appropriated for movies nowadays: "Nobody walks. Everybody drives." Paris, Texas walks.

Walt threads up some Super 8 film of a young Hunter, Travis, Walt, Anne and JANE (Nastassja Kinski), whom we glimpse for the first time in the film. This choice of film stock sets the images apart aesthetically, but also suggests something profound in the way it depicts the love between Travis and Jane frozen in the past. We'll never see Travis and Jane together again. The only thing left of that love is a strip of film, a memory.

The second half of Paris, Texas is Travis and Hunter going back to TX to find Jane. Okay I just gotta highlight one more of my favorite Robby Müller compositions: when Travis and Hunter eat burgers and fries in the bed of the Ford Ranchero underneath the winding snakes of highways looming over them. God that's fun to look at.

Travis finds that Jane works in a peep show where individual booths have a phone and customers make various requests as they watch her or other workers through a window. They can see her but she can't see them. We see quick fleeting glances of Jane leading up to Travis finding her by taking the role of customer in one of the booths.

Nastassja Kinski's appearance as Jane in the small room is maybe the most beautiful MCU in film history; with the soft overhead lighting, the set decoration, the color scheme, the magenta angora sweater, the choice of lens and distance of the camera to her. But this scene is also painful, especially if one is susceptible to the aftermath of losing someone from a passionate romantic relationship that ended badly. The metaphor of Jane not being able to see Travis, but still there for anyone to play out their romantic fantasies with, for only a small fee. And that it's that simple. And that there's that permanent barrier that will always keep him from ever being seen by her again.

But it's the second visit Travis makes that explains it all. Sam Shepard's insight through the dialogue into the process of pathologizing in detail how a relationship disintegrated.

Jane still doesn't realize it's Travis talking to her at this point, doesn't realize that he's talking about them. Until he gets to the point where he describes when he "used to yell and throw things in the trailer." When she hears that word "trailer," she snaps to recognition. Everything about her tone changes. Memories long forgotten come flooding back.

I have this theory that I know is going to sound crackpot but it goes something like: the color red is code for the mutual love of a parent and child in Paris, Texas. When we first see Travis lost in the desert he wears a red ball cap, but its faded. When he and Walt stop in a motel the sheets on the beds are bright red. It's like Walt has that love and he's trying to take Travis to find it. Where Hunter lives, at Walt and Anne's the blinds are red. In the Super 8 movie Anne swaddles child Hunter in a red shawl. But when Travis goes to meet Jane the final time there's no more red anywhere. And the reunion between Jane and Hunter is seen by Travis outside, from a rooftop, where he's drenched in green with a sunset in the background. And the final shots of the film find Travis weeping, in a frame where we only see part of his face, from behind, and red spills into the frame from somewhere. It's like it's behind him now.

--Dregs