813-816 Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
Message
Author
User avatar
DarkImbecile
Ask me about my visible cat breasts
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:24 pm
Location: Albuquerque, NM

Re: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)

#26 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon May 27, 2019 5:11 pm

Torn between being thrilled at another typically insightful and too rare Sloper post and deeply disappointed that we didn’t get one when Motel Hell was the Film Club selection.

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)

#27 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon May 27, 2019 10:21 pm

Sloper wrote:
Mon May 27, 2019 4:01 pm
Bruno's line also addresses Robert's need to be seen, and Robert's addresses Bruno's need to embrace change. Without being sentimental about it, there is a kind of down-to-earth heroism in the way these two damaged men have made the effort to engage with each other. The film's multiple titles all come to fruition as we see how, by simply passing time together, Bruno and Robert have attained a kind of mastery over their own lives.
I agree with most of this, particularly the analysis of Robert and Bruno’s psychology, though while they certainly help one another achieve newfound growth and readiness to face their fears again, I’m not sure I’d call this mastery. I view the idea of mastery as a measure of refining skills to achieve confidence in control, a behavioral form of action. Robert and Bruno gain insight and acceptance into their respective anxieties through one another’s presence, but Wenders makes it clear throughout this film that neither character has control over his life, or that anyone has control over other people (i.e. women, seen and unseen) or events (i.e. car wreck). It’s the acceptance that these longings for, or attempts at mastery as futile that allow Robert (and we hope Bruno) to forfeit this expectation that has lead to existential crises, and become willing to throw themselves into life, exercising what little control they have to lower their defenses, become vulnerable, and face the risks of the uncontrollable, including change, personal significance, and emotional connection with others. I believe they achieve a kind of anti-mastery, and through that humility, a sense of serenity that allows Robert and Bruno to move on with smiles on their faces. This could be viewed as individual mastery I suppose, if viewed as isolated from other forces in their lives, though even that doesn’t fit with Wenders’ understanding of the emotional man. One doesn’t ever achieve mastery over oneself, as he is subject to intrusive emotions and thoughts, and if one ever did achieve mastery over himself, what would be the point of living without growth? But these men get to smile in this moment and have gained irreversible insight that will help them become more content people.
[Note: this isn’t meant to be an argument over semantics; I actually do see the acceptance of ‘mastery over life as false’ to be a sense of serenity as ‘acute mastery of the mood’- so I appreciate that you used the word “mastery” because its dissection sparked further analysis of the metaphysics Wenders explores here in these characters’ internal drives and relationship with the rest of the world that I hadn’t considered as extensively before]

User avatar
Boosmahn
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:08 pm

Re: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)

#28 Post by Boosmahn » Tue May 28, 2019 8:04 am

The one shot that sticks out from my mind is when the electronic rock(?) music swells and we get a beautiful shot of the tree/car wreck. I can't find it anywhere online.

User avatar
ando
Bringing Out El Duende
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:53 pm
Location: New York City

Re: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)

#29 Post by ando » Wed May 29, 2019 1:40 am

Loads to unpack with this film. No one (in this thread) has mentioned what Wenders may be saying about the inheritors of Hitler's failed Third Reich or the children of that German WWII generation. Wenders, Herzog and Fassbinder were three in a handful of filmmakers during the seventies who attempted to illustrate what and/or how the younger generation were grappling with that recent history. Is it like what James Baldwin said about the American Beatniks (his contemporaries) who were perpetually "on the road" because they could not or would not face their history?

The Pepsi-Cola motifs, the American (or, at least, American sounding) records in Bruno's collection (sorry, couldn't identify the songs) and Robert's comment about the American occupation are obvious topical references but is there any deeper significance or influence of the American presence in their lives?

Certainly, the influence of film presentational history runs throughout the narrative, not only due to Bruno's line of work but also in the ways that both project their imaginations to other people - whether through Robert's creative writing; then primitively, through that scrim for the children; or in Bruno's demonstration of splicing and/or recreation of the perverts methods of obscuring portions of a movie-in-progress for sexual kicks and/or in the ultimate full feature showing, from start (though not completely) to finish. Why couldn't both main remain through a promised showing of a full feature through its completion? Because they had embarrassed (even mortified) themselves in the completion of the creative act with the kids? Because their audience was imperso Al and so had nothing in stake? Why was it more cool to walk out (though, actually, their flight from the cinema like two escapee Marx brothers in, initially, the wrong direction was anything but cool!)? Are they hooked on flakiness?

The use of still photographs throughout is certainly poignant. The obvious shots (nods) to Fritz Lang and Andrei Tarkovsky are easy to identify but who is in that cut-out (in the three director Polaroid shot) by Robert? And does anyone here have an inkling about why he does it?

A second viewing is in order for me. Though I'm not sure if it will clarify as much as make a deeper impression of their frightening emotional and psychic ambivalence/paralysis. But I assuredly won't fail to get another kick out of
SpoilerShow
Bruno's perplexed expression over what to do with a flaming black wax bust candle impression of Adolf Hitler with which he lights his cigarette.
You just know Wenders was busting to bring in The Doors! :lol:

User avatar
Sloper
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 10:06 pm

Re: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)

#30 Post by Sloper » Sat Jun 01, 2019 6:44 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon May 27, 2019 10:21 pm
I agree with most of this, particularly the analysis of Robert and Bruno’s psychology, though while they certainly help one another achieve newfound growth and readiness to face their fears again, I’m not sure I’d call this mastery.
No, you said it much better in your post - I really struggled to phrase this correctly, because despite my complaint about themes being spelt out, this remains a very low-key ending, and any points being made are made very obliquely. That makes it sound vague, but it doesn't feel vague because of the tonal and emotional clarity of the final scenes. I guess I wanted to express this in words somehow, and to say that the film's English title seems to fit the ending in a (mostly) un-ironic way. But as you say, what the characters achieve at the end is more complex than 'mastery over their own lives'.
ando wrote:
Wed May 29, 2019 1:40 am
No one (in this thread) has mentioned what Wenders may be saying about the inheritors of Hitler's failed Third Reich or the children of that German WWII generation. Wenders, Herzog and Fassbinder were three in a handful of filmmakers during the seventies who attempted to illustrate what and/or how the younger generation were grappling with that recent history. Is it like what James Baldwin said about the American Beatniks (his contemporaries) who were perpetually "on the road" because they could not or would not face their history? The Pepsi-Cola motifs, the American (or, at least, American sounding) records in Bruno's collection (sorry, couldn't identify the songs) and Robert's comment about the American occupation are obvious topical references but is there any deeper significance or influence of the American presence in their lives?
I don't really have any answers to this, but maybe it's interesting that the ex-Nazi ex-silent-film-accompanist singles out Die Nibelungen, a nationalistic epic 'dedicated to the German people' and one of Hitler's favourites, and Ben-Hur, which you could see as an emblem of Hollywood's (and America's) encroaching cultural dominance? (Probably less interesting and relevant: Fritz Lang made another two-part German epic in the same year as the remake of Ben-Hur.)
soundchaser wrote:
Mon May 27, 2019 4:11 pm
And to follow up on one of Sloper’s points: yes, that defecation scene, coming as early as it does, really sets a tone. It’s an unusually bathetic way of presenting a protagonist on-screen, and although I don’t think the effect is necessarily humorous, I remember being struck by the result of the defecation itself being so...large. And the way Wenders frames things has stuck with me as well. The relative size of Vogler compared to the beach makes it feel like we’re watching a “primitive” man in an old nature documentary — like we’re seeing something at once a part of us and apart from us.
It's sort of a primal, heroic shit, isn't it? It's this film's equivalent of Siegfried venturing alone into the forest to slay Fafnir.

User avatar
The Curious Sofa
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2019 6:18 am

Re: 813-816 Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy

#31 Post by The Curious Sofa » Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:46 am

I watched Kings Of The Road for the first time recently and it may have been my favourite movie watching experience of the year. I’ve been working my way through Wender’s early films, never having given him much of a chance because his two most famous movies never quite landed for me. Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire look stunningly beautiful, but on a character level I never could connect with them. I don’t understand the casting of Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski as a former couple in the first film and while Kinski is fine, I think the film would have worked better with an older actress. After a stunning introduction to its world Wings of Desire goes of the rails once some sort of plot kicks into gear. Solveig Dommartin may be one of the most pitiful attempt of a movie director attempting to make his muse a movie star. She is so awkward and uncharismatic, I felt nothing but sorry for her whenever she was on the screen. I love Peter Falk and Colombo (who in their right mind doesn't ?) but his whole plot strand is way too cute for me.

Now I’m working my way though the early films I can get hold of in HD. So far I’ve watched The Goalkeeper’s Fear..., Alice in the Cities, The American Friend and Kings of the Road. I liked all of them better than Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire and each of them better than the previous film. Alice in the Cities is charming but in terms of tone now feels like a dry run for Kings of the Road. The American Friend I’d watched in my teens. I saw it on TV, didn’t make an impression and I probably was too young for it then. This time it blew me away. It may be one of the most atmospheric and beautiful looking films I’ve ever seen, the way it takes you to Hamburg and Paris in the 70s. Bruno Ganz holds this movie together, he’s utterly compelling to watch. Dennis Hopper’s Ripley may be the only quibble I have with the film. It’s not that he’s nothing like Highsmith’s Ripley, I just never thought he was a good actor. Only someone like Lynch understands how to utilise him. I was in Hamburg soon after I saw the film so I ended up checking out some of the locations. Ganz’s apartment block is still there, but the whole area by the water has been redeveloped and it made me mourned the grungy settings of the first film.

The American Friend is the movie which convinced me that Wenders can be amazing and which finally made me watch a three hour, plotless movie by a director who I’d previously considered overrated. I’ve never seen another movie about a male friendship quite like it, two men grappling with each other’s and their own inadequacies and sort of getting closer. There are images which have seared themselves into my mind and one I wished I could forget. A week on, I can’t shake the emotions the film left me with.

I don’t really have that much to add to the posts I’ve read in this thread and I much enjoyed reading them. Maybe one thing which hasn’t been touched on that Wim Wenders has an eye for clothes. There is an effortless cool to the clothes Rüdiger Vogler and Hans Zischler wear and how they wear them. They are one thing which make the movie timeless, these guys would still look great now. It’s a touch Wenders never lost, hipsters still emulate Harry Dean Stanton’s look in Paris, Texas.

I love the offhand way the film deals with 20th century German history, the first scene with the projectionist who was a Nazi party member, feels like documentary. I assume it was a real interview ? In the early films Lisa Kreuzer played characters who still reasonably felt like real women, before Wenders’ female characters became abstract enigmas, viewed and desired by men, or Wenders more specifically.

I haven’t watched The Wrong Move yet, I thought it would be better to stick with the more highly regarded early films, but it will be the next Wenders for me. I’m intrigued by The State of Things but it’s not that easy to get hold of. I’ve seen Faraway So Close, which I enjoyed slightly more than Wings of Desire but not enough to revisit it. Otherwise I’ve got Pina on BD, more because of the subject matter. The rest of the later films don’t seem that well regarded but I’d like to check out more of Wenders’ documentaries.

Post Reply