Terre d'abondance

This is a sort of anti-Wenders film. While most of his films are uplifting, beautiful and spiritual, _Land of Plenty_ is a brutal and unpleasant exposé of American paranoia. It's very well done, and it's frighteningly accurate. Still, I can't imagine any Americans will enjoy watching it.

If you're in denial, then you will be offended by this movie (like most of the negative reviewers here). So don't bother.

If you're familiar with the paranoia and bigotry that has enveloped this country then this movie will upset you, just as if you had a big wart on your nose, and someone made a film about it. So don't bother.

I believe the only people who could possibly enjoy this film are objective (non-American) viewers who do not feel the shame that this movie exposes.

I'm rating this film an 8 because it was well done, but I can't recommend it to anyone. It was just too excruciating for me (as it should be for all Americans who share the burden of what our country has turned into). Another film which falls into this category is _House of Sand and Fog_ which one critic called "the feel-bad movie of the year".

This movie made me feel like crap. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch _Lisbon Story_ 1000 times and try to recover from this.

This is for me the most coherent of the Wim Wenders films I've seen and it's to-date the best attempt to depict post-9/11 America on film. The not-so-subtle symbolism, the superb acting (especially by Michelle Williams), and moving story line, which concerns an attempt to give a homeless Pakistani man a decent burial after he is gunned down in a drive-by shooting, come together to paint a portrait of an America left stunned and somewhat confused.

I was moved by the one scene in which John Diehl's character Paul is informed by his friend that "It's not who we thought," and we see on his face, the hope fading away of ever finding any relief for his vague need for some kind of justice--and this is mirrored by the fading desert sun in the background.

I agree with the other reviewer that these completely American characters may make sense mostly to non-Americans--but that's only a result of the films unflinching objectivity. Watch and learn.

Wim Wenders is a great director and a really honest artist. What he lacks though is a real feel for the US....Going back to his early use of Dennis Hopper, woefully miscast as Tom Ripley, in Our American Friend, Wenders has a weakness for clichés about America rather than finding the real thing. This movie doesn't change that fact. What is essentially a tone poem about the loss of innocence (and maybe common sense) in post 9-11 America turns into a melancholy family drama about two lost souls who would probably have been just as lost before 9/11 as after it. Europeans might find the American 'types' portrayed in this film a validation of how they view the U.S. but most thoughtful Americans will probably be irritated by the simple reductions of the characters. I found Michelle Williams particularly annoying for some reason...maybe it was her blind faith or maybe it was just her complete lack of edge...they don't make women like that in America these days and probably never did. I really admire Mr. Wenders for tackling this subject as American filmmakers seem not to have the courage to do so themselves. In the end though, this is more a European film that will appeal to Euro audiences...whereas it would have been a better project if it were directed more this way. (I saw the film in Paris last week.)

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/

There isn't too much to like about Wim Wenders' films over the last twenty years. There have been a few bright spots, but for the most part, Wenders' obsession with America has gotten the worst of him. In his prime, few directors since Antonioni were as adept at depicting inner monologues through silence. Wenders' characters were complicated men of few words.

Over time Wenders love affair with America somehow convinced him that the 'less is more' approach was failing. Wenders threw his greatest strength out the door and substituted it with what would become, over time and many films, his achilles heel: big ideas.

The characters in Land of Plenty aren't really individual people, they are ideas. These characters represent something grander, something excruciatingly ambitious: the American conscience. Lofty goals of this sort often end up as preachy and pretentious and LOP's screenplay is just that. Shot on the cheap, on digital video, LOP feels like noble idea rushed into production without the benefit of enough revisions to weed out the heavy handedness. Films concerned with the traumatic effects of 9/11 are compelled to be both profound and reverential, the problem is profound and reverential seldom make for a worthwhile movie going experience. If there was a rating system based on the number of American flags displayed in a movie, LOP would score full points, as it is, LOP rates very low.

Somewhere in Trona, a near-ghost town you pass through on the road to Death Valley, the full extent of Uncle Paul's delusions is demonstrated. And at that same moment, I realized he was the personification of post-9/11 America, raging, raving, striking blindly at false targets, and kidding ourselves that we are safer now that we've invaded Iraq without justification and reelected the worst U.S. president in history. The film promises there may be some hope for us. But only if we have the courage to stand on the edge of the abyss. The line that resonated most for me was that the 3,000 innocent people who died in 9/11 could not have wanted their deaths to lead to more dying. This movie was a masterpiece. It finally offered me a way to think about 9/11 and subsequent events without making me crazy and despairing.