But the aimlessness of both the character and narrative are so genuine, the longing mood so real and the Robby Mller cinematography so evocative, that the lost and directionless dimensions of the film take on quietly poignant qualities.
Film Kenji Plus A GoldenBut the director, born in 1945, a key figure in New German Cinema and the holder of three Academy Award nominations (plus a Golden Lion, a Palme dOr and an honorary Golden Bear from Venice, Cannes and Berlin respectively), has from day one been as interested in the people that fill these landscapes, and in the ways that they move.The journey seemed to trigger the restless wanderer in him and the painter-turned-filmmaker soon began a soulful and inquisitive examination of landscapes from America and beyond.This curiosity and peripatetic quest for answers about how human beings live, exist, suffer, and ultimately try and discover themselves has taken him all over the globe to tackle myriad topics.Music has always been key, particularly in his documentary work, which often features artists that Wenders admires and wants to share with the world Pina Bausch, Sebastian Salgado, The Buena Vista Social Club. Wenders is the subject of Portraits Along The Road, a touring retrospective from Janus Films of twelve of his films at present, some of which have hardly ever been seen in this country, and have now been lovingly restored, and to mark the occasion, weve picked out the ten most essential of his movies across a career thats now closing on the five-decade mark. Take a look below, and let us know your favorites in the comments. Such evasiveness is part and parcel of Wim Wenderss resolutely anti-psychological approach in this, his second feature. Despite what the title suggests, The Goalkeepers Fear Of The Penalty (also sometimes known as The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick ) has little to do with soccer and everything to do with close character observation. Even when Bloch suddenly chokes a random woman to death, he, and by extension the film, remains inexplicably unfazedin stark contrast to the cool he loses when disputing a missed offside penalty call in the films opening scene. The result plays almost like a man-on-the-run thriller without the thrills, replaced instead by a near-anthropological detachment, one seemingly more interested in local colorespecially bits of American culture intruding onto the German landscapethan plumbing the depths of the titular athletemurderer. Unlike Rainer Werner Fassbinder s stylistically similar Why Does Herr R. Run Amok, there is no build-up to any violent catharsis or blinding revelations. The first in the directors beloved Road trilogy, Alice is hopelessly in love with the tattered fabric of American life, even if the directors worldview remains untethered to any one time or place in particular. In this way, Alice can be looked at as a sort of spiritual companion piece to the early films of Jim Jarmusch, who also made languid, minimalist pictures that examined the sublime poetry embedded in everyday life as well as the stark contrasts in the various cultures that make up the melting pot of our country. What story there is follows a shiftless photographer played by Rdiger Volger, whose assignment is to find some sort of meaning in the dead-end margins of middle America. Along the way, he finds himself becoming the guardian, if thats the right word for it, for a fearlessly independent little girl named Alice who has wandered out into the world in search of her long-estranged grandmother. What unfolds is alternately bemusing, beautiful, intimate and devastating played, as always, in Wenderss delicate minor key. Theres a superficial similarity to Peter Bogdanovich s Paper Moon (a comparison Wenders himself was not entirely happy about) in the films depiction of a strained father-daughter relationship, but otherwise the films are as different as night and day. As a tender, textured story about broken relationships and the ongoing search for home, Alice is nothing short of a knockout. Much more aimless than his other films (read: plotless), The Wrong Move is at the very least a sort of manifesto in film form, setting out everything Wenders ever tried to achieve in cinema. It centers on a man in a type of existential crisis, who goes on a journey to Bonn in order to hopefully discover his voice as a writer, while along the way gathering a odd group of friends to travel with (like Kinski as the mute acrobat). Absentee fathers tend to be a theme in Wenderss works and yes, theres no patriarchal presence in the film, but the domineering mother who finally lets her son go and buys him the train ticket to Bonn is rather unique. When his fiction films havent worked, his soul-searching qualities have been accused of being incredibly pretentious and ponderous and The Wrong Move ostensibly fits that bill with its contemplative voice-over and long, gazing shots intended to find meaning in landscape.
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