Faux mouvement

"The Wrong Move" is essentially a plot less film about loneliness that follows a late twenty-ish year old, blond German writer-to-be for six days. He is someone who is in search of something. The film is in German with English subtitles and is unusual in that there are occasional first person voice over/commentaries by the principal character by which we know exactly what he is thinking. The film is set in the early 70's with a short audio track of American rock that dates the movie. Through his first person commentary, the writer freely admits that he is not very good at observing people nor does he like people, which leads one to wonder what kind of writer is he? Because "The Wrong Move" is a Wim Wender's film, one inevitably notices the carefully composed shots with meticulous attention to detail. This brief odyssey is a more sophisticated version of candid camera in which the confused writer encounters a handful of people. The film, then, is about his interactions with these people. These characters appear randomly, interact, and disperse.

This is probably Nastassja Kinski's first film. If not, then the likelihood of ever watching whatever preceded "The Wrong Move" is close to zero. Long out of print, "The Wrong Move" was only available on scarce, hard to find VHS tape that can be exorbitant in cost, but now is one of eight DVD's in the Wim Wenders Collection Vol 2. It is extremely unfortunate that the DVD has been enhanced for pseudo wide screen, meaning that the original 4:3 image has been chopped, losing some of the image of the original VHS tape. The film was low budget and has attained near cult following among some. Nastassja was a whole thirteen years old when "The Wrong Move" was filmed. This was the first of three films that she has made with Wim Wenders with the other two being: the legendary 1984 "Paris, Texas" and the powerful 1993 "Faraway, So Close." In "The Wrong Move," Nastassja is cast as a mute - meaning that she doesn't speak, has no lines of dialog, and doesn't use anything resembling sign language. Her on screen presence is then all facial expression and body language. In some scenes she looks like a scruffy, scrawny twenty year old.

Other times, she has the face of a twelve year old. Sometimes she is a well made up teenager. Sometimes not. But there are always the tennis shoes and the way that she walks that underscores that she is a very young adolescent girl. In the hands of Wim Wenders, her performance is fluid and natural. She and her much older male companion/guardian make their living with Nastassja as a street performer - one that is not highly skilled and in some respects awkward. That has to do more with her young age, rather than a lack of physical skills. Nastassja is a juggler and not a very good one as she usually drops one of the balls. One time she stands on her head, another time she does cart wheels. Eight years later in "Exposed" this gymnastic talent would be on full display in a very sexy, solo performance in front of an all seeing mirror. There is one particular memorable scene in which the writer and the band of strangers are walking through a neighborhood street, observing the interchanges between residents on the roof top of the buildings. The timing is exquisite, the look on Nastassja's face is memorable - but that is Wim Wenders and is an indication of the potential first rate talent in this thirteen year old girl. It is no accident that Nastassja is in so many scenes and some of those appearances are very brief. Even in nothing scenes in which she is not doing anything out of the ordinary, Nastassja is focused - not sleeping or bored. Peter Sykes, the director of "To the Devil...a Daughter," would later see "The Wrong Move," remember her, and later on in need of a young German actress would hire Nastassja.

It is all to easy to see "The Wrong Move" as a very superficial movie. Even the translation of the title presents a problem. Should it be "Wrong Movement?" "False Movement?" "wrong" and "false" imply that there is a "right" move or that one has strayed from the "right" path and is in search of it. Is there a "right" path? Is there a "wrong" path? What is the path? Does it make a difference? These are the types of questions that go to the core of the human experience. There is depth here, but only for those who can "see" into it.

This early Wim Wenders film is about a frustrated writer who is encouraged by his mother to take a train trip to Bonn. On the way he meets an odd assortment of characters including a former concentration camp guard who is now a street musician, a mute teenage acrobat, a semi-famous actress, a hilarious overweight would-be poet, and the latter's "uncle", a depressed suicidal recluse. The film is rather talky and philosophical, frequently meditating on the nature of artistic creation itself. It has kind of morose atmosphere to it like Wender's later film "Paris, Texas", but without the redemptive ending. For lack of a better word I would call it existentialist. Like "Paris, Texas" it's kind of an existentialist road movie except that the characters travel by train.

The only recognizable actor in this is a young Nastassia Kinski. This isn't nearly as sexy as one of her late 70's/early 80's roles (but like "To the Devil a Daughter" a year later, it's probably sexier than it ought to be). Still, whereas most male directors at the time were mostly interested in undressing Kinski (both on and off screen), Wenders can be credited at least with making her a more respected actress, mostly with her later role in "Paris, Texas", but also to a lesser extent with her debut role in this.

I can see why people find this kind of slow-going and perhaps a little depressing. But I found it quite interesting and actually enjoyed it.

Wim Wenders and writer Peter Handke team up a decade before "Berurin Tenshi no Uta" Wings of desire (1987)(Ailes du desir) and 4 decades before The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez (2016) based on Peter's play in French to premiere at Cannes this month.

It is shorter and simpler than Wings of Desire and it feels as though the whole movie is almost one take, one moment, one long reflection on the same theme of loss and loneliness, perhaps longing and love. It is poetic and philosophical, but also human. It succeeds in asking tough questions and not given easy answers. It understands human complexity and perhaps perplexity facing an uncontrollable, sometimes unsatisfying life.

Momentary solace and camaraderie soon dissolves as things fall apart naturally, casually and necessarily. Much more down to Earth than somehow esoteric Wings of Desire and has a direct impact on the viewer even if often dark and detached beyond the light-hearted and hypnotic beginning.

A interesting find, and perhaps one of the best movies of 1975, winning 6 German Film Awards including a deserving best direction, best screenplay and best cinematography by Robby Müller who shines on various occasion and gives a cohesive visual feel. I will look up Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976) to see see if Wender achieved similar success. Let's hope Peter Handke again gives substance to Wim Wenders now that Wenders is tackling 3 fiction films in a row after dedicating a decade and a half to creating captivating documentaries starting with Oscar-nominated Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and even better recent offerings Pina (2011) and The Salt of the Earth (2014).

Many people spring to life when expressing their contempt for Wim Wenders' films, pushing themselves toward new heights of eloquence...and for that reason I usually keep my admiration for him to myself but this movie and the Goalie's Anxiety (not the easiest film to watch) really hit the nail on the head. Incredible portraits of people (in this case men) who have itches that they just can't scratch! In one scene the "hero" listens to the ex-Nazi make some crack about Jesse Owens getting the gold medal and he says,"..so you wouldn't have stood on the platform next to a black man?" and I thought, "I would give anything to see an American movie with a conversation as half as real as this!" You think Wenders is boring? Ok, fine, he's boring. But American movies are phony, like Mcdonald's french fries, they're treated with formaldahyde to maintain their "natural" color.

Time does not always work in favor of movies. The second film I saw in Wim Wenders' retrospective at the local cinematheque was' Wrong Move' (the original title in German is' Falsche Bewegung'), which belongs to the cycle of three 'road movies' created by the director at the beginning of his career in the 1970s. It's one of those cases where as a film lover you can recognize many of the cultural ideas and landmarks on which the film is based and you can identify signs of the director's subsequent evolution. However, there is a lack of vibration and even of a great deal of interest, since the problems of post-war Germany are largely out of date and the style of dialogues combining existentialism with Goethe's writing experiences does not resonate in any way for the viewers of today.

Those who read Goethe know that Wilhelm Meister is the hero one of his novels in which the hero, a young writer in the making, crosses the future of Germany from north to south on a journey of intellectual initiation and self-discovery, trying to find the literary and emotional resources necessary for his profession. The action is shifted to the Germany of the 1970s when young Wilhelm Meister receives as a present a similar journey from his mother. He gets on his way and meets some bizarre and especially alienated characters typical of a society that had not completely exited the post-war trauma. The accumulation of information and emotion is rendered in the film through a combination of slow action, dialogues that are actually more monologues, and off-screen text probably extracted from Goethe's book. It is a combination that may have worked and may have been really interesting in the movies of the '60s or '70s (used intensely by Antonioni for example) but which in this film has a dormant effect.

Yet, there are a few good reasons why this film deserves to be seen. First of all for the two formidable actresses that appear in the cast. For Nastassja Kinski , still at teenage age and before getting the name under which she became famous, it was the debut film. For Hanna Schygulla, at the peak of her beauty, it was probably the first important role. Both play splendidly in roles that fit them perfectly. The problem is that each of the actors seems to play their roles separately. There is a story in the film that includes an ambiguous romantic triangle, but it lacks any vibration, perhaps because of the wooden acting of the actor in the lead role (Rüdiger Vogler). The existentialist type of the characters has real motives in the history of Germany at that time, but for today's spectators, especially if they are not familiar with that history, their behavior is difficult to understand. The feeling of verbosity at certain moments is accentuated by the slow pace of action in the intermediate scenes. In the absence of many obsolete cultural and historical landmarks, 'Wrong Move' does not say much to the contemporary film viewers.