Bis ans Ende der Welt

There are so many things to love about this film, starting with all of the places it takes us to and how beautifully they're captured. My goodness, it's gorgeous at times. There's also a wonderful little lookahead to technology of the future; though it's only set 8 years later, in 1999, there are all sorts of advances shown that are fun to compare to how things really turned out, such as the video phones, the Russian surveillance program with the animation of a bear that informs the user "I'm searching," and what Max von Sydow is cooking up in the desert. The soundtrack is comprised of great songs from an all-star list of bands from the period, and they fit the mood of the film perfectly. The film has got an apocalyptic feeling to it, and yet the story is playful and light, because the focus is on stolen money and chase that goes all over the world in the first half. As Solveig Dommartin's character puts it, "If it was the end of the world, why shouldn't we go down laughing?"

I confess that for most of the runtime I thought this would have been better either as a drama/chase focused on the threat of nuclear Armageddon, or as a science fiction film about the technology of extracting images out of our brains, which is what we see in the second half, but not both. Aside from making the film god-awful long, it wasn't clear how these two things were really connected, that is, until the final half hour or so. Wenders seems to be saying that the threat to humanity may not actually be what everyone was worried about at the time, nuclear war (or in this case, a catastrophic nuclear accident), it may be people become addicted to technology, and having it steal their souls. It was absolutely remarkable to see the characters staring down bleary-eyed into their devices, when 30 years later we've all ended up staring down into our phones. What was a wonderfully organic community out in the Australian outback, with time for dancing and music amidst all of the research, becomes fractured, with isolated individuals caring more about their devices than others. I absolutely loved this aspect of the film.

While it had a lot going for it, so much so that I might have rated it a little higher, I also struggled with it. Four hours and 47 minutes is a lot, and the film drags at times. In the first half it suffers from escape sequences that seem hokey in their conception and then not all that well acted, and in the second half, it just lags. I've liked William Hurt elsewhere, but did not like him at all here; I thought his performance was weak from beginning to end. Solveig Dommartin is just barely passable; while she brings a certain soul to the role and is easy on the eyes to say the least, she delivers her lines with very little range. Thank goodness for Max von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau, who were such a joy to see. Maybe I'm being too hard on the film or maybe I would have liked the three hour theatrical release that Wenders dismissed as the "Reader's Digest" version better, I don't know. It's got lots of moments that are 5 star and overall it's definitely worth seeing, but I wouldn't recommend it without reservations.

At the end of 1999 the world is under threat as an Indian nuclear satellite spins out of control and slowly descends towards earth. Claire however has other problems, seeking solitude she gets mixed up with tow bank robbers and agrees to delivery the stolen money to Paris. On her journey she meets Trevor McPhee, who enlists her help to escape a man who is chasing him. Trevor steals some of Claire's money to continue his global journey. Claire pursues him across the Russia, America and Germany (with a detective and ex-boyfriend in tow) to find his quest is more emotional than it is criminal.

Wim Wenders – simply a great director, visionary in his own way. However here he bites off more than he can chew with an ambitious road movie that, like the satellite that threatens the earth, easily spins out of his control. The story starts intriguingly – Claire's journey is interesting and her globe trotting is at least entertaining. It doesn't have a great deal of humour – but it is light and it feels like Claire, Trevor and Eugene's journeys are all building to something.

However it doesn't provide. The final hour of the film is static – all in Australia, and it becomes heavy with pretention and navel-contemplation. The subjects of dreams etc are broached but it doesn't convince, despite throwing up interesting images and some intriguing ideas. It very much crawls to a conclusion and it's almost a relief when it ends.

The title suggests that there will be an element of apocalyptic dread about this. I know that's not the focus of the film, but I did feel it could have used this better. At the start it is mentioned and we see some evidence of panic etc but after that it is forgotten – in fact everywhere seems quite normal. Later in the film something happens that threatens the earth but in a desert in Australia we never know what's happening and indeed neither the characters or the director seem to care either. I don't know why they bothered with the story line at all – they certainly didn't do anything with it.

The cast are OK, but they move all over the place with the tone of the film. The best summary of the cast is that Hurt and Neil are nearly always watchable. Dommartin as Claire isn't as good as she needs to be and can't carry the `quest for love' side or the `addicted to dreams' side. They do provide some good moments but the characters are as illogical and meaningless as the film itself! Why would two bank robbers let Claire transport their money AND let her travel the earth for her lover and continually send her money to do it?!

Overall this provides several entertaining moments, but this is never as deep as it thinks it is. The second half is bogged down in a heavy plot and babble about dreams etc and by the time the ending comes you'll almost wish that the satellite had just fallen quickly and put us all out of our misery. Deeply disappointing.

Director Wim Wenders crafted a majestic, multi-continent -spanning, and quite long near masterpiece here, that near the end falls somewhat short due to certain loosely connected plot outcomes. Here, I am reviewing the 'quickie' 2 hour US version, though. The cinematography , casting, sound track... are all about as good as it gets, the cat and mouse chase between the main characters is nicely done, and through it all we have the overhanging threat of a global nuclear catastrophe in the form a runaway Indian nuclear satellite, which I felt could have been more urgently presented. All the characters meld well with the script and plot, but near the end I felt that the 'end of the world' aspect- the threat of literal annihilation- should have went in a more dangerous direction. Wenders punted . Part road trip movie, and totally an early 90's hipsters favorite, everyone should see this commercial failure- turned cult classic at least once, and try to watch the extended full length version if you can, I hear it is overall more engaging, it just adds up better, than the US one, despite the length ( about 5 hours). One subplot is the two edged nature of technology- nuclear power to heat and light up our lives yet a satellite might end it all.. and then more technology might save the day...... and a mysterious invention that relates to vision and dreams, but do we really want this? Overall very good, plus Max Von Sydow and William Hurt are in it, so how can you refuse ?

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.

Wenders takes the time to take us to another place that is right beside where you are now, whether you know it or not. Beautifully shot and scored, the movie rewards those that allow it to unfold rather than showing you the plot in the first 15 minutes. With an emphasis on personal emotions rather than "screen presence", the actors reveal much about us all- no super-heroes here.

Granted it is a long film by "American" standards but who can say how long a film should be? I felt transported to the times & places Wenders takes us, to me this makes a successful film regardless of its length. The storyline is well crafted and the music editing is brilliant; when I hear the music today I think of the film and not the bands that performed it.

William Hurt has a role (finally) that suits his personality. The pairing of Jeanne Moreau and Max Van Sydow is brilliant. Definitely a movie that should be seen at least once in your lifetime.