Bis ans End Der Welt (Until The End Of The World) (1992) 
directed by Wim Wenders
directed by Wim Wenders
"Until The End Of The World" is Wim Wenders over 5 hour globe-trecking cyberpunk epic, intended to be "the ultimate road movie".
It plays out like a miniseries, about a woman who just separated from her writer boyfriend(played by Sam Niel who serves as narrator), and crashes cars with wounded bank robbers, they offer to give her some of the money if she will transport the cash the rest of the way to Paris for them.
She agrees and uses her money to finance the trip that ensues for the rest of the movie. She immediately after meets William Hurt, a mysterious hitchhiker she becomes fascinated with.
He is on the lamb, but from who, and why? After he ditches her and steals a hefty sum she becomes obsessed with finding him. 
All the while a rouge Indian nuclear satellite hovers above the Earth, haywire and endangering a possible nuclear Apocalypse if it accidentally detonates. 
The world is closer to ending than it has ever been, which means its just a story on the news in the background, most people try to ignore. 
The first segment, in this three part film, is their chase cross country and continent, "A Dance Around The World", as the book about their lives is latter called. 
They begin in Italy, and go on to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, San Francisco, and finally the Australian Outback, our heroin Miriam discovers, that Hurt is wanted for a stolen piece of Government property, a device that records the experience of seeing and translates the information as images.
He is recording the most beautiful places in the world, for his blind mother. He is the son of Max Von Sydow, the inventor of the device. Their cat and mouse game becomes a whirlwind romance of constant movement and escape. 
By the third segment they reach Sydow's underground lab in Australia, where they also discover that the device cannot only record seeing for the blind, but can record dreams if left on during sleep.
The aboriginals who run the lab with Sydow refuse to work on his dream machine. Slowly but believably the rest of the staff, becomes obsessed with staring into the recordings of their dreams, "It got to the point where they dreamed of their dreams...and fell ever deeper into the black well of Narcissus ."
There are car crashes, planes losing power mid-flight, and one gorgeous locale after another. Like "Alphaville" and "The Fall" this film is completely indebted to its beautiful sights, that it finds and photographs.At five hours long, you can imagine it meanders a good deal.
And it does, but for a film so dedicated to the pure spectacle and profound importance and danger of "seeing things", I didn't mind. 
Future content wise, there is a clear opposition between the dual natures of the machine, helping the blind to see the world, and allowing the sightful to intrude upon their private internal world, whose appeal is magnetic and addictive.
Technology is a double edged sword, amazing but not without its serious ethical and philosophical dilemmas (which is the more real world the one within or without? etc), this movie doesn't delve into it conversation wise, it's lets everything play out, at five hours it gives you the credit that you can work it out for yourself.
Not released in North America yet in its full form I think. It's really just a beautiful film to watch, that's much sweeter and gentler than most sci-fi, and more fascinating too because it doesn't shove its implications down your throat. Wim Wenders, got people like The Talking Heads, Can, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, U2, Nick Cave, and many many more, to make original songs for the soundtrack about the new millennium.
While many of the songs are very good, most are awkwardly placed as well. No doubt Wenders was really excited about all the music and just wanted to use everything. Understandable, though, if you could get all your favorite bands to make original music for your movie, wouldn't you use all the songs?
Still its enthralling to hear such distinct music, laid against so many lovely backdrops, even if it doesn't all click. This is a road movie, for its first three and a half hours really, with the really sci-fi only picking up towards the end, and much of it is spent soaking up the global scenery, feasting with the eyes one last time, before the world is all burned away. The apocalyptic feel of the movie comes, from how desperate it seems to take in everything, as if Wenders really did think this was the last film ever. 
I can't imagine how this was released as anything but 5 hours, the plot is so subtle and languid, I couldn't imagine this functioning quicker. The big budget sci-fi bomb is a genre to itself, along with films like "Virus", "Brazil", "On The Silver Globe", "Zardoz", "Dune", "Quintet", "Southland Tales", and "The Fountain", "Until The End Of The World", is another case of when talented directors make balls to the wall, crazy sci fi. Definitely flawed, but a richly excessive and eccentric experiments and time capsule.
Despite its hefty run time, I thought Wenders was sensitive, to the changing dynamics of the future world, it's not dystopian and it's not Star Trek/Fifth Element Space-Opera either, it occupies, a space, where simple good or bad, are no longer really relevant to discussion.
At one point when everyone assumes the world has ended Sam Niel's character is playing in a small band with several Aboriginal neural scientists, a few french-bank robbers, a British bounty hunter, and some random strays who wandered into the Australian compound fearful of nuclear fallout, and they play a music that sounds like Australian Blue Grass; Didgeridoo's and pianos, harmonica's, and trumpets, blending together to create something singular and new.
He notes to himself, "This entire trip hasn't been about helping a blind woman to see, or gazing into ourselves. But this adventure, the satellite, the machine, the crash, it all occurred, so we could be here, at this moment, to create this music which would have never otherwise existed, right at the crest of the end of the world". 
Few sci-fi films are dedicated to power of music (that the characters play), words(that Sam Neil records for his novel), and images(of coming war, of the beauty of the world, and the contours of our own mind/dream/souls,etc). In Alphaville when the computer asks Lemmy Caution, "What moves the night?", Caution responds, point blank, "Poetry".
Wim Wenders updates, upgrades, and extends this concept for the new millennium.Though I cant remember too much of what was said, I'm still humming along days later, with some pretty pictures circulating in my head like post cards from an alternate universe. It's a bittersweet, love, travelogue, adventure story, for the New Millennium; "Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?", as written by William Gibson on a sentimental day.
directed by Wim Wenders 
More people beleive in Angels, than in God, its a curious fact. It may not be true, or be a fact which has just followed me. I polled three difference classrooms over the years, highschool through college, same every time. Maybe its something to do with people liking nurses more than doctors, an immediate helping hand, to a distant voice of authority, a nurse with a smile and medicine, instead of the doctor with the bad news and the bill. 
"The Sky Over Berlin"(Wings Of Desire, is the hookey US title, not translation) is the only film I have ever seen to give a truly 3rd person view, a Gods Eye POV. The story is of two Angels, who observe(from always elevated camera angels), the lives and thoughts of human biengs. Most of the film is from this first person black and white POV(the humans perspecive is in color), a camera floating over random people, listening into their thoughts(remiscient of REM's "Everybody Hurts" video, except no one dissapears, and this came out first). 
If your okay with the ultimate form of people watching, being both disembodied and an intimate psychic voyeur, this is great. If you want to see something where alot of stuff happens, watch the Happening, it's okay too.
What does happen is few and far between, the angels talk a little, their conversations are like poems, they stand next to or press their hands against miserable people making them brighten and become less narrow for a monent(it doesnt always work), and become enamoured with mortals. 
One angel makes repeat visits to a small circus to watch an acrobat, who may have to quit working at the circus soon and go back to bieng a waitress til same time next year. She loves bieng on high and is afraid of falling in a number of ways, her thoughts have a quality similar to the way the angels speak to one another. The Angel is afraid/excited with the idea of descending to the world as well, his fascination with her makes sense.
If this is begining to sound familiar its because this was remade in the 90's with Nicolas Cage as "City Of Angels", but is otherwise a completely different movie, and besides this one has performances from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and that one has Meg Ryan.
As for why there are so many musical performances, well the last song, he plays is called "From Her To Eternity' I had never heard it before, but the chorus was loud enough for me to hear that phrase, again and again. I got the message, ya know the expression, music is the langauge of the soul.
The structure is basically linear though, we follow the angel around, his thoughts are the thoughts of whoever he crosses, there is a subplot involving Peter Falk, playing Peter Falk as an actor in berlin shooting a film, strangers call him Columbo, he thinks about Colombo's lack of wearing a hat, maybe he shouldnt wear one in this new movie too. He seems aware of the angels presence, as we are made aware he is an actor in a movie. 
He tells a boy his book about their being two hitlers is absurd, when the boy tells him his detective movie is silly to, he responds "yeah but people will bend over backwards for a detective story". Some fantasies, however silly, we want. This movie is one of them. 
The themes of the beauty the most trivial moments of life, is cleverly and clearly displayed. But to me this made just as much sense as a movie about lonliness, and being an observer, a person always on the outside of things looking in, and deciding to take a dive into the imperfect world of other people, as it did anything else. 
Theres a childrens book I like called the Shy Creatures.
About a little who never speaks in class, tells her teacher she wants to be a doctor, to big foot, loch ness and other imaginary beasts(should they stub their toes, or catch colds), who are not really monsters at all, just incredibly shy like her, which is why they always keep out of view, and in the shadows. The Sky Over Berlin, is basically that story for adults. 
The Sky Over Berlin is a beautiful, funny, original, and adventerous movie, thats fascinating to think about, and a joy to watch. Warm, fuzzy, and meditative.
