Excellent posts. I've not seen the full length version yet but I recently rewatched the shorter one and while I would not be as harsh on it as zedz I can definitely understand where he is coming from!
Particularly agree on the music front. The way most of the music is blown through with token snippets in the background of the early scenes has got to stand as the most wasteful use of a soundtrack in cinema history!
Tommaso wrote:
Some of the problems that you mention might disappear if you look at the film from a particular angle, and that is: it's a film about seeing, and also about movie-making and the history of the movies.
zedz wrote:
To summarise, the gaudy first half seemed little more than filler: international locations, cameos-a-go-go, but thin on content with a repetitive catch-and-release structure.
True, but I think that Wenders quite consciously adopts typical clichés of noir/crime thrillers etc., and the repetitive structure only serves to highlight the generic formulas here. I actually always liked this part, because I had the feeling that Wenders took the formula and made fun of it (think of Vogler's character, for instance). That the characters are all flat might be of course a by-product of the bad acting, but I think it also helps the intentional stereotyping. And regardless of Wim's intentions or failures, I find the visuals stunningly beautiful all the time...
I would agree with Tommaso and would also add that I feel all Wenders' films are more about the journey than the arrival, which is often why the climax of his later films like this and The End Of Violence feel like letdowns from the point of view of narrative payoff.
I also feel that Until The End Of The World is about people ignoring what is going on around them that they have no influence over to live in their own fantasies (perhaps the one prescient 'futuristic' idea in the film). Claire Tourneur is the main example as she has absolutely no direction, just driving aimlessly around until she gets caught up in an obsession with Farber and the whole first section of the film seems to be about the way all the different, fascinating locations are being ignored (strangely like the music, they are literally reduced to the background) in favour of Tourneur's chase of Farber.
Through that first section Farber looks purposeful but what is interesting is that in the second half of the film where we find out about his work it is just as much an attempt to escape from the world as Tourneur's is. There is complete indifference to whether the outside world has ended or not because it really doesn't matter to Tourneur or Farber. It would seem that for Farber the outside world was just something he had to endure to collect images to show to his mother (if we are being uncharitable towards his character the film could be seen as a cautionary tale about the lengths a bore will go to to force someone to see his holiday snaps! "Blind, you say? Well let me hook you up to this machine and we'll see about that! You
will see the pictures of myself and the wife on holiday in Japan!")
And even then, it is less about his relationship with his mother than his father. For me it creates the idea that the film is trying to say that people don't do anything for 'humanity' in the abstract, instead they create things because of their attachments to people they know. It follows from that perhaps that really the only person Farber is interested in is himself, which is why we get the final section of the Farbers and Tourneur watching their own dreams through their invention and wandering obliviously through the landscape - they're literally caught in a cycle of self-regard. Who needs others? (That is why I quite like the "junkie of your own dreams" line, even if it is a bit on the nose)
But then, and this is why I feel Sam Neill's voiceover is so important, the film is filtered through the eyes of an outsider to all this introspective, narcissistic, blinkered action. He is also a writer, who of course needs other people to read his work to be considered a writer (he can't just read his account himself) and we could suggest that writing and reading is a process of asking the reader to create their own images for the story rather than pursue a definitive image of their dreams - it is a different way of probing your mind and one which you can turn outward to suggest your idea of the world to others rather than inward where you are just defining yourself to yourself in an act of mental masturbation.
However he could be seen as just as flawed as Claire as he facilitates the round the world trip (just as it seems likely that he facilitated her aimless drifting around before and at the start of the film) by providing her with cash! In that sense, if we are continuing with the "junkie on your dreams" idea, Eugene was her old dealer who is upset that Claire's hooked up with the guy pushing the latest drug and has unceremoniously dumped him! It also makes the ending where Eugene forces Claire to go cold turkey on the dream machine more powerful as he was obviously never able to deny her anything before.
Also, at what point did Eugene decide to write his account? Did Eugene let Claire run round the world (and has he always let her drift aimlessly about, getting into different situations) to simply get material from her?
It is an extremely strange film, equating looking inwards too much with travelling the world and not seeing anything. It is as wasteful in construction as the characters are wasteful in the pursuit of their goals. It would seem to be mostly about the pleasures of the journey rather than the inevitably always disappointing arrival (even when Jeanne Moreau is there to greet you!), but at the same time the journey could be suggested to be useless only when we are not aware of our surroundings.
I find it flawed, clunky and terribly dated but also a strangely earnest and touching film. I'm not sure I would defend Million Dollar Hotel as much! (but I do think it shares some of the same qualities of ennui and technological disconnection with The End of Violence)