Der Stand der Dinge

This is one movie I've enjoyed seeing over and over.It's one of my all time favorite. The story is pretty simple; A filmmaker runs out of money while shooting in Portugal. He goes looking for his producer in Los Angeles to find out what is going on. This one of the most beautifully shot movie in black and white I've seen and it helps to set the overall atmosphere of the film. The cast is great and the story flows right along. Apart from a few lenghty scenes (wich is why I gave it a 9), you won't be disappointed.If you're interested at all about movie making don't miss this one.

Between commercial successes like Paris Texas and Angels over Berlin, Wenders still manages to make the kind of seemingly irrelevant road movies such as Santiago and State of Things, that have made him the cult hero he is. Here a cheesy scifi B-movie is interrupted at a climatic scene to follow people just hanging around talking. Which is more cinematic is a question that comes back over and over again. Actively pursuing a life, no matter how mundane or screwed up, seems to be more rewarding than passively waiting to have someone else fulfill your fantasies, or so this film seems to hint. Good film for those still in love with non virtual reality.

This is not a movie that's easy to understand, yet it easily makes you think. It smells of nostalgia and of things past and fading. The film that the film crew is shooting about survivors to a nuclear holocaust is a parallel to the director's own journey to collect money from his LA producer in order to continue the film. The movie is visually beautiful, full of the magic of black and white photography. It's also a movie that constantly speaks about itself, about the hardships of shooting black and white, and about the need for "a story" which the film itself seems to lack. It tries not to be a film, but to film life. Yet, in the ordinary and particular of everyday life it conveys the eternal and universal.

I saw this film when I was in mid-20s in 1982. I viewed this film with Stanley Brock in Santa Monica, California. Stanley Brock was in the Actors Studio with one of the actors from "State of Things" - Allen Garfield. I have not seen the film again, but if I see it in the video store, I will rent it.

The eerie black and white photography of the Portugal coastline creates the loneliness of the actors. I love that image of the coastline even 20 years later.

I do remember Allen Garfield and Paul Getty in this film.

Please see this film if you have the chance.

Time has passed since i watched this wonderful movie, and it remains in my mind like those dreams you remember for ever although had lasted ten, twenty, thirty years, like a child's dream. In effect ever i though this film was made as Wenders wanted to built an feverish dream, the American night, in a gorgeous black and white, the scene the crew is filming with that children dying and screaming like an hurt animal, and the self image that Friederich receive in an old printer from the screenwriter. Do you remember those old movies of 60's made in the Nuevo Mexico desert? Those movies made in a high percentage in a false night that you could feel the heath of a warm wind?. Longer, the best Wenders'film.