German

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A loose contemporary adaptation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, the middle installment of Wim Wenders’ “road movie trilogy” opens with a scene that’s pure Wenders — a young man gazes out his window while American rock rollicks out of the LP player, until he suddenly puts both fists through the glass, quietly sobbing. That’s Wilhelm (Rudiger Vogler), who grudgingly accepts that, if he’s ever to become the writer he wants to be, he has to overcome his dislike for people and venture out to accumulate experiences. In place of inspiration, the journey hooks him up with a group of fellow loners, the “dead souls of Germany”: an apathetic actress (Hanna Schygulla), an aged ex-Nazi whose nose bleeds from “remembering” (Hans Christian Blech), his mute street-performer travelling companion (a teenage, almost tomboyish Nastassja Kinski), a pudgy poet (Peter Kern), and a suicidally bereft industrialist (Ivan Desny). Read More »

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Wim Wender’s deliberately paced, hauntingly realized contemporary masterpiece, Wings of Desire is, all at once: a political allegory for the reunification of Germany, an existential parable on a soul’s search for connection, a metaphor for the conflict between, what Friedrich Nietzsche defines as, the Appolinian intellect and the Dionysian passion, a euphemism for creation. A dispassionate angel stands atop a statue on a winter morning, watching over Berlin. His name is Damiel (Bruno Ganz): a spiritual guide for the desperate, an eternal spectator of life. The world is gray through his eyes, unable to experience the subtlety of the hues and textures of physical being. Read More »

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A convoluted and cloudy murder mystery, The American Friend succeeds because of, and in spite of, its myriad ambiguities. Ripley (Dennis Hopper) drops by Derwatt (Nicholas Ray), a painter who’s faked his own death so that he can sell his works at a premium. This is a lucrative partnership since Ripley passes on the pictures in Europe while Derwatt lives his life out in peace. In a Berlin auction house Derwatt’s latest work is snapped up for a mighty sum, pleasing Ripley. On the way out he briefly chats with the happy purchaser and his colleague Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz), who plys his trade as a restorer/frame-maker. Jonathan appears quite aggressive, hinting that he “knows” about Ripley and mentioning that the blues of the picture are subtly different from those of earlier works. Back at his ostentatious villa, Ripley is asked to fulfil a debt by shifty-looking Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain). He requires someone totally innocent to undertake a contract killing, leaving no ties to Raoul.Read More »

Our first film was Pina, the documentary on contemporary dancing directed by Wim Wenders. I’m so glad to have chosen Wim over Bono, though, because Pina is an impressive and audaciously original piece of filmmaking.
Pina is an essay on the life and work of renowned choreographer Pina Bausch. Pina appears in some archival footage, and several members of her dance troupe testify to her ingenuity and artistic inspiration. The spirit of Pina, however, lives on in her dances: the film offers four of Bausch’s famed dances in their entirety, but dispersed and intercut throughout the film.Read More »

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“A comedy in six parts,” each introduced with a quote taken from a public bathroom wall (“Slave seeks master to train me as his dog,” etc.). The Kaiser Wilhelm Church dominates the Berlin skyline as seen from a glass-paneled, high-rise office, a shooting takes place on a monitor. Surveillance footage? No, the ending of The Devil, Probably. Each generation has the revolutionaries it deserves, after the Baader-Meinhoff affair you’re stuck with middle-class ninnies: leader Volker Spengler secretary Hanna Schygulla, schoolteacher Bulle Ogier, composer Udo Kier, housewife Margit Carstensen. The puppet master is the industrialist (Eddie Constantine) who heralds cinema’s utopian lies (“As long as films are sad, life isn’t”); his corporate must promote security equipment, so he manipulates the radicals into kidnapping him and sits back to enjoy the clown show.Read More »

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Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. Alone, Maria puts to use her beauty and ambition in order to find prosperity during Germany’s “economic miracle” of the 1950s. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s biggest international box-office success, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.Read More »

Somewhere in the future there is a computer project called Simulacron one of which is able to simulate a full featured reality, when suddenly project leader Henry Vollmer dies. His successor Dr. Fred Stiller experiences odd phenomena. A good friend, Guenther Lause, disappears in the middle of a conversation and a week later nobody has ever heard of him. And those fits of dizzyness – Stiller cannot believe himself to be fool. There has to be an explanation for all this. Could Simulacron have something to do with it?Read More »

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Tonight I saw the infamous Wildwechsel, or Jail Bait, at the Museum of Modern Art. This movie lives up to it’s reputation as one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s darkest and most perverse movies. And that’s really saying something.Read More »

Description: There is really nothing you could get out of this film. Not even with the weirdest mind. Even some Japanese action director would have made a more believable and satisfying 10 minutes film with this plot line. So is there anything good about it? Yes, if you would look at it as a dream. Because in a dream, nothing has to make sense. Just like this early short from Fassbinder.Read More »