Bis ans Ende der Welt

Wenders takes the time to take us to another place that is right beside where you are now, whether you know it or not. Beautifully shot and scored, the movie rewards those that allow it to unfold rather than showing you the plot in the first 15 minutes. With an emphasis on personal emotions rather than "screen presence", the actors reveal much about us all- no super-heroes here.

Granted it is a long film by "American" standards but who can say how long a film should be? I felt transported to the times & places Wenders takes us, to me this makes a successful film regardless of its length. The storyline is well crafted and the music editing is brilliant; when I hear the music today I think of the film and not the bands that performed it.

William Hurt has a role (finally) that suits his personality. The pairing of Jeanne Moreau and Max Van Sydow is brilliant. Definitely a movie that should be seen at least once in your lifetime.

I have only seen the full-length 280-minute "trilogy" version of this film (at the 2001 USA Film Festival in Dallas), and I honestly cannot identify any sequences that could be cut without seriously compromising the flow of the story.

This film works so well on so many different levels -- an adventure, a love story, a question of ethics and technology, life and death, love and family, but mostly it explores the question, "how far must we travel (or how long must we sit in the theater) to find that which we seek, and what exactly is it we're seeking anyway"?

Yes, 4-1/2 hours is a long time to sit still (although, with two intermissions it's not all that bad), but for those of us who enjoy a good film that's not made from a pat formula of committee-designed ingredients in strictly regulated proportions, it's worth every minute.

The vast majority of people I know have never understood this film. Probably this is because the 2.5 hour running time of the original release is actually vastly too short for the story. The director's cut is a whopping 4.5 hours, but goes by so quickly one hardly notices. If you are bored, then you probably haven't figured out what's really going on. Some notes:

This is a story of trials, of how our relationships to each other, and to humanity and the Earth, are shaped and impeded by technology. It is a fearful story of the dangers of our world as Wenders saw them in almost 20 years ago now. The journey is central here (as it is in almost all epic works) and the story doesn't work without seeing that journey unfold first all over the earth (and no, it wasn't about sponsoring nations--the journey of Sam and Claire et al reenacts other journeys only alluded to in the film, bringing up themes of connectedness to family and place.)

To me the most important theme in this film is the power of the journey and of stories to transform us--a theme so old we may be tired of it, though it remains relevant today. Eugene (Neill) is to me the central character, and any good viewing of the movie depends on understanding how he fits in as more than a side character caught up in a great chase.

One last note: this doesn't deserve to be described as Sci-Fi. Yes, there's some science-like imagery in it, but the thrust of the movie is literary. The "science-fiction" in the movie serves only as an extension of the transformations and journeys of the characters. It turns those things inward rather than outward, and succeeds well in doing it. A truly remarkable and excellent film that got a bad first screening because no distributor had the guts to put out a 5 hour movie. (What would they say to Akira Kurosawa these days?)

At the end of 1999 the world is under threat as an Indian nuclear satellite spins out of control and slowly descends towards earth. Claire however has other problems, seeking solitude she gets mixed up with tow bank robbers and agrees to delivery the stolen money to Paris. On her journey she meets Trevor McPhee, who enlists her help to escape a man who is chasing him. Trevor steals some of Claire's money to continue his global journey. Claire pursues him across the Russia, America and Germany (with a detective and ex-boyfriend in tow) to find his quest is more emotional than it is criminal.

Wim Wenders – simply a great director, visionary in his own way. However here he bites off more than he can chew with an ambitious road movie that, like the satellite that threatens the earth, easily spins out of his control. The story starts intriguingly – Claire's journey is interesting and her globe trotting is at least entertaining. It doesn't have a great deal of humour – but it is light and it feels like Claire, Trevor and Eugene's journeys are all building to something.

However it doesn't provide. The final hour of the film is static – all in Australia, and it becomes heavy with pretention and navel-contemplation. The subjects of dreams etc are broached but it doesn't convince, despite throwing up interesting images and some intriguing ideas. It very much crawls to a conclusion and it's almost a relief when it ends.

The title suggests that there will be an element of apocalyptic dread about this. I know that's not the focus of the film, but I did feel it could have used this better. At the start it is mentioned and we see some evidence of panic etc but after that it is forgotten – in fact everywhere seems quite normal. Later in the film something happens that threatens the earth but in a desert in Australia we never know what's happening and indeed neither the characters or the director seem to care either. I don't know why they bothered with the story line at all – they certainly didn't do anything with it.

The cast are OK, but they move all over the place with the tone of the film. The best summary of the cast is that Hurt and Neil are nearly always watchable. Dommartin as Claire isn't as good as she needs to be and can't carry the `quest for love' side or the `addicted to dreams' side. They do provide some good moments but the characters are as illogical and meaningless as the film itself! Why would two bank robbers let Claire transport their money AND let her travel the earth for her lover and continually send her money to do it?!

Overall this provides several entertaining moments, but this is never as deep as it thinks it is. The second half is bogged down in a heavy plot and babble about dreams etc and by the time the ending comes you'll almost wish that the satellite had just fallen quickly and put us all out of our misery. Deeply disappointing.

There are so many things to love about this film, starting with all of the places it takes us to and how beautifully they're captured. My goodness, it's gorgeous at times. There's also a wonderful little lookahead to technology of the future; though it's only set 8 years later, in 1999, there are all sorts of advances shown that are fun to compare to how things really turned out, such as the video phones, the Russian surveillance program with the animation of a bear that informs the user "I'm searching," and what Max von Sydow is cooking up in the desert. The soundtrack is comprised of great songs from an all-star list of bands from the period, and they fit the mood of the film perfectly. The film has got an apocalyptic feeling to it, and yet the story is playful and light, because the focus is on stolen money and chase that goes all over the world in the first half. As Solveig Dommartin's character puts it, "If it was the end of the world, why shouldn't we go down laughing?"

I confess that for most of the runtime I thought this would have been better either as a drama/chase focused on the threat of nuclear Armageddon, or as a science fiction film about the technology of extracting images out of our brains, which is what we see in the second half, but not both. Aside from making the film god-awful long, it wasn't clear how these two things were really connected, that is, until the final half hour or so. Wenders seems to be saying that the threat to humanity may not actually be what everyone was worried about at the time, nuclear war (or in this case, a catastrophic nuclear accident), it may be people become addicted to technology, and having it steal their souls. It was absolutely remarkable to see the characters staring down bleary-eyed into their devices, when 30 years later we've all ended up staring down into our phones. What was a wonderfully organic community out in the Australian outback, with time for dancing and music amidst all of the research, becomes fractured, with isolated individuals caring more about their devices than others. I absolutely loved this aspect of the film.

While it had a lot going for it, so much so that I might have rated it a little higher, I also struggled with it. Four hours and 47 minutes is a lot, and the film drags at times. In the first half it suffers from escape sequences that seem hokey in their conception and then not all that well acted, and in the second half, it just lags. I've liked William Hurt elsewhere, but did not like him at all here; I thought his performance was weak from beginning to end. Solveig Dommartin is just barely passable; while she brings a certain soul to the role and is easy on the eyes to say the least, she delivers her lines with very little range. Thank goodness for Max von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau, who were such a joy to see. Maybe I'm being too hard on the film or maybe I would have liked the three hour theatrical release that Wenders dismissed as the "Reader's Digest" version better, I don't know. It's got lots of moments that are 5 star and overall it's definitely worth seeing, but I wouldn't recommend it without reservations.