Don't Come Knocking

"Don't Come Knocking" is undoubtedly the best fiction film made by Wim Wenders since "Wings of Desire". Wenders joins forces with playwright/actor Sam Shepard and the result is a wonderful journey, in Wenders' best style, of a man who flees his life to search for himself. Howard is an over-the-hill western movie star who's had his share of sex, booze and arrests in the past. He never settled down and prefers the lush life. Until, one day, he decides to flee a movie set, apparently for no reason apart from an existential crisis. He searches for anonymity in his small home town, visiting his mother for the first time in 30 years and discovers he might have had a child with one of his on-the-road conquests. This realization sends the middle-aged man on a search which confronts him with his own past, the way he has lived his life and what he could have done with it, had he decided to live it another way. But don't expect a morality tale: Wenders and Shepard are too intelligent for that. True to his instincts, Howard will persist in his erratic behavior till the very end. In short, in an age of comic book movies, "Don't Come Knocking" holds you onto your seat with a story that lets us breathe a bit of humanity. Wonderful performances, with kudos to Jessica Lange, maybe in her best performance ever. And we still get a homage to John Ford with images of Monument Valley and the large expenses of the West. Truly, a gem of a movie!

Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard let you walk in the boots of a guy who's stepping out of his pitiful daily life to face the past and find out how this can be both hard and rewarding. Wender's beautiful slow moving style to unfold the story lets you follow and feel what's going on within the "hero" and the people he encounters. The marvelous scenery of the West is shot to remind you of some scenes of "Thelma and Louise". The music blends in wonderfully. The interactions are almost every time worked out in every detail and dialogs sound so real you can imagine this to happen in your neighborhood. Last not least all of it is played by an outstanding group of actors making it very hard to decide who'd be your favorite which adds to complete the reason why this movie is excellent to me.

Funny scenes, laughter and deep emotions - if you're a lover of fast-food (movies) - don't go. You'd probably find it boring.

I really wanted to like Don't Come Knocking. It's a contemporary Western by famed German director Wim Wenders, written by Pulitzer-Prize winner (and stud actor) Sam Sheppard, and including in the cast Sam's main squeeze (and my first crush) Jessica Lange. With these credentials, I would have bet that Don't Come Knocking would have been in my Top 5 at Sundance this year.

Not even close.

Here's my #1 criterion for judging a movie: Did I care about the characters? Love 'em or hate 'em, either one is OK, they just have to mean enough to me to care about what happens to them. And unfortunately, I didn't care two hoots about Howard Spence (Sheppard), the washed-up Western actor who tries to escape his past of hard living and general selfishness. I didn't even care about Doreen (Lange), a former girlfriend from a movie shot in Butte, Montana. And I certainly didn't care about Earl (Gabriel Mann), Doreen's son, no matter how over-the-top obnoxious his behavior. Maybe I did care for Sky, the Butte native played by the remarkable Sarah Polley, who was clearly the most likable and the only truly compelling character in the movie. And Tim Roth's portrayal of the studio bond man was interesting at least.

But beyond character development, this movie just didn't have any direction, suffering from the thinnest of story lines and a pace that often needed a quick kick from Howard Spence's spurs. It does feature some interesting locations and beautiful southern Utah landscapes. But that's not why we go to movies.

Wenders and Sheppard go back to their collaboration on Paris, Texas in 1984, and they spoke very fondly of each other during the Q&A. They collaborated on the story over a period of years and have looked for a chance to work together again. I wish they would have produced something better.

Interesting Tidbit from the Q&A: Sheppard's son Jesse is an expert horseman and did his father's riding stunts for the movie. Sam Sheppard also rides well, but his contract limited his riding to a trot.

Second Interesting Tidbit: Wenders has wanted to shoot a film in Butte for twenty years, since his first visit there, and was concerned that someone else would film there before him.

119 minutes – that's a relatively long runtime for a movie. But that doesn't have to mean it'll be boring. The sparse dialog in this movie isn't really what it's all about anyway. It's all about the emotions and the amazing pictures.

Sam Shepard portrays his role so wonderfully that you can sense his frustration with his life and his search for some meaning and his longing to change his ways.

Eva Marie Saint is equally adept at her portrayal of the old western actor's mom.

Jessica Lange, though, is truly outstanding. She steals the movie with one scene in particular and really deserves an award for her work in this film.

At the end of the day: this is Wim Wenders as we know him and as we like him best.

Wim Wenders' makes extraordinary movies about ordinary people. Whether the inhabitants are important personalities or 'little people', they are always especial because of their humanity.

When I did an internet movie quiz that supposedly answered the question, ¨If someone made a movie about your life, who would direct it?¨ I kinda hoped it would be Wenders. His characters are tiny flecks on a vast landscape, made infinitely interesting by fine observation and untiring attention. Each character is a mystery unravelling.

In 'Don't Come Knocking', we follow the almost incomprehensible actions of a leading Hollywood actor (played by Sam Shepherd) who absconds from a film set in the middle of the American desert. He is struggling to escape a lifelong persona of drink, drugs and women, but doesn't know what he is looking for or why he feels life has passed him by. He is nudged occasionally in the right direction by his mother, and followed by a mysterious young woman carrying her mother's ashes – and whose knowing smile gently holds back a reservoir of yet-to-be-explained emotion.

Wenders can never be accused of hurrying things along. His movies can be like watching paint dry – except that when the painting is finally ready to touch we may feel a masterpiece has just crystallized before our eyes. This is perhaps one of those occasions. Tim Roth as the inscrutable bond man tracking down the wayward actor is barely recognisable till half way through the film, so perfect is the characterisation. Sarah Polley as the mysterious Sky can almost make us burst into tears before we have any idea why, or of the secret she is holding. Shepherd plays Howard Spence with biopic-like conviction. Add a score by T-Bone Burnett that seems to suspend time in the desert with guitar chords that hang in the air, and framed scene upon scene that looks like a classic movie poster waiting to be discovered.

Don't Come Knocking is like one big Do Not Disturb sign on the things we most need to know and that no-one wants to tell us. It's why they're secret – and why we also have to know. The film takes a very long time to answer it's own puzzle but, if you can stand the pace, the result is ultimately worth it.