Waste of time

Fresh and Exciting

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Yesterday at the EYE film museum, in Amsterdam, the Directors Cut was screened. Wim Wenders was present, there was a Q&A and Robby Mueller was in a wheelchair in the front of the screen. Solving Dommartin, the lead actress, and co writer, passed away from a heart attack in her 40's. Until the End of the World – Director's Cut (4K) 287 min, with one 20 minute intermission. I saw this in it's "readers digest" cut (the words of Wim Wenders) when it first came to theaters. Wenders explained that he was forced to sign a contract, where he would agree to edit the film to something like 2.5 hours, before it would be promoted for wide audiences. There are so many beautiful images, Vermeer comes to mind in one scene, places in Australia that you will most likely never have the opportunity to experience, it's a wonderful opportunity if you ever get the chance to see the Director's cut,, do it. Wenders appears to me now as a soothsayer,, in that he predicts the narcissistic viewing on small screens, that we all see now. Selfies,, in the film it is shown as an obsession with ourselves in our dream state, and leads to a temporary insanity.

Many say that the 4.5 hour version is much better than the 2.5 hour. I guess there were even eight-hour and twenty-hour versions.The 2.5 version hobbles along after the first hour. I can't imagine more than this. I didn't sense any great examination of the human condition. It was pretentious and self-serving. (I have a crappy job where the time crawls by and I'd gladly go there vs. another minute of this.)Closely following that was the illogic in many elements of the story. The bank robbers wanted the girl to carry the money to France. Why?The good guy steals SOME of the money?The bank robbers finally come back for their money. I GUESS they got it all. Very forgiving bank robbers.Basically my problem is that the money was stolen and stolen and stolen and there was plenty left over.And the film was way too forgiving of this girl. She runs all over the world to get her money back and for the love of this guy. I found it silly.And the bank robber gladly shows up in the 2nd hour to help this girl? I guess French bank robbers are pansies.The zapping of all the electrical devices was lifted directly from Escape from L.A. I was surprised how short-sighted the technology of it all was for being made in '91.Then they lost me when he met up with his parents. I didn't see the great psychological discussions that everyone else did.And why did he travel the world with that stupid camera? If the point was to see if the mother could see with this camera, then go outside for ten minutes and film a bush. Or the house cat. But NOOOO. We have to take two years to do that? After the ten minutes and it works, then put the camera in front of the Travel Channel.I'm sorry. My bad. Then there would be no movie and no room for bad overacting.

Wim Wenders over 5 hour globetrecking cyberpunk epic, is 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, Bejing, Tokyo, San Francisco, and finally the Australlian 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 Australlia, 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 midlight, 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. Tecnhology 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.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.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 Australlian 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 has not 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 Wolrd Is Carmen San Diego?", as written by William Gibson on a sentimental day.

I just finished watching the 4 hour and 36 minute version of this movie and want to say that it is incredible! I've watched the American (Reader's Digest) version of it before and always had trouble making sense of it. Well, watching the longer version of it makes so much more sense.The idea that the flesh becomes the healing word on paper that saves us from our narcissistic dreams is fascinating concept.I compare this movie to Leoni's "Once Upon a Time in America". Only when the Director has control of the editing, does really become an awesome piece of art.The music is phenomenal! The story is mind-blowing. Very European pacing. I highly recommend it to all! www.harpo.ca