Lisbonne Story

I watched this movie a few days ago with the strong impression of having seen it before. Anyway my first impression as it started was great because I felt as lost as the personality on the screen and I am sure that was Wender's intention. We are first and foremost lost in translation as we are lost as tourists on the road to Lisbon. We are children once again. This film is marvelous. Definitely my favorite Wenders movie to date. It captures almost all the things which never cease to fascinate me such as the arts, music, travel, women, friendships, poetry......love. A pure example of how much more valuable it is to open the heart rather than the mind. A wonderful introduction to the music of Madredeus and definitely a great advertisement to visit Portugal which was already in my agenda.

I've spent the last few days trying to come up with the perfect description for this movie, and I'm afraid another reviewer beat me to it: "This movie is good for the soul."

This is the perfect movie for the uninspired artist who is suffering from malaise, writer's block, disenchantment or perhaps just an overall pissy attitude toward the world. It's absolutely beautiful. The actors are endearing, the story is charming (though not without a few poignant touches of darkness & spookiness), and the music is downright hypnotizing.

This film gave me a big smile from beginning to end. The humour is what I call "real life silly"--these are things that have happened to us all at one point or another, and to watch the characters' reactions is hilarious, because we say to ourselves, "That could've been me!"

But overall this is a movie about love, not necessarily between people but perhaps between a person and a city or a person and a camera or a person and a microphone. It's gorgeous in its ambiguity because, like I said up front, it can inspire any of us out of our deepest rut.

In past reviews of Wim Wenders' work I have been brutally uncomplimentary; he has often struck me as a meandering type who lacks the ability to pull his visions together coherently. But this film has given me a completely new appreciation for his lucidity and ability to convey a profound (yet abstract) thought. The two monologues at the end carry perhaps the strongest messages I've ever seen on film. Simple but resounding.

I give LISBON STORY 10 stars, something which I rarely do even to my favourite films. But this movie is literally perfect, I can't criticize a single thing (edit: OK, after thinking real hard, I suppose there's one flaw... the guitarist's fingers don't exactly match up with what he's playing in one scene. But I think we can all agree that's nitpicking). Enjoy!

The first time I watched "Lisbon Story" I was disappointed and rather annoyed at what seemed a pretentious and self-indulgent experiment.

Then several months later, I watched it again, and was captivated by it, enjoyed it thoroughly, and found it to be a good-hearted, affectionate salute to motion pictures and by extension to art in general. Though the film's humor frequently borders on being downright corny, I couldn't help enjoying even that aspect because of the obvious good will with which it was presented. It feels refreshing to have a film-maker work so hard to amuse the audience! That in itself is a token of respect.

Wenders has made here a film that's slippery, puzzling, and that eludes the mind's grasp at every turn, yet in the end delivers a powerful and even joyful message. It takes a certain amount of courage to send a positive message to an audience these days--or even in 1994, when the film was released. I applaud Mr. Wenders and I applaud this film. I'm very glad I thought to watch it again--I will definitely see it again in future, too.

The existential issue of the director Fredrich who doesn't succeed to finish his movie is something much beyond the understanding of most of the people, including myself. The facts that (1) he quits his house to live in a kind of Romiseta, (2) doesn't make any attempt to meet Phillip Winter to whom he asked to come to Lisbon, (3) is quickly convinced by the Phillip arguments to finish his film, these three facts suggest me that his problem is not an existential problem, but a kind of madness. The way Lisbon is shown through the eyes of Phillip is very nice. It reminds me scenes my youth in Alexandria (Egypt), and how were old neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro almost a century ago. The atmosphere of the music of Madredeus is magic, and Phillip has good reasons to fall in love with Teresa Salgueiro, I would fall in love with her also. The film deserves to be seen by a spectator who is looking for a story which will leave him with more questions than answers, in the company of friends with whom he will try to find answers.

As an eighteen year old in 1983, I ended up in Lisbon on a fairly aimless wander around the Iberian peninsula on the railway network, and simply fell in love with it. I stayed for a while to explore the city and surroundings and ended up with a rich mental image of the sights and sounds of this beautiful city.

When I came across a reference to this movie, I simply had to buy the DVD. Interestingly, I see that the intention of the movie was to capture the spirit of the city, and thankfully it does not do so from a touristic point of view.

It captures Lisbon at an interesting time for the country, some 20 years after the revolution and 8 years after Portugal joined the European Union. And also at a time where it was modernising fast. A few years prior to the shooting of this movie, there were very old buses and the old trams (Eléctricos) ran just about everywhere and up impossibly narrow and steep roads where you could reach out and touch the houses. Now, there are just a couple of heritage routes, and these are the eléctricos featured in the movie out of necessity. Today, the transport system is completely modernised and I can see the point of the movie in trying to capture the spirit of a city before it changes out of recognition.

The use of the group Madredeus to provide the music is, I think, quite inspired. To make a movie about Lisbon could have turned into a 'yawn' if it had used a cliché of Fado. Thankfully it didn't and used something more contemporary. And what a group! The music is haunting, so much so that I have now gone off and sought out their CDs! Teresa Salgueiro reminds me of those Portuguese girls I met as a youth, she is just perfect for the part.

As has been mentioned by another reviewer, the movie is a bit self-indulgent in an 'arty' type of way, but it IS entertaining.

Finally, I prefer the movie with the subtitles turned off. The movie has a pan-European flavour with various languages popping up and intertwining. I suppose I benefit that I can grasp the gist of Portuguese when it is being spoken, and the German in the movie is basic enough that most of us will have absorbed some of it from movies and TV. Teresa Salgueiro's voice is very clear to understand when singing to those who are trying to understand the language, and is a real pleasure to listen to. To someone who may never have visited Portugal, the use of children who are fluent in English might seem odd, but in general, the Portuguese (well, in Lisbon, especially so) have always been good English speakers and I find it entirely natural to find Portuguese schoolchildren who speak English as well as Portuguese.