• Part of Wenders “road trilogy” which includes alice in the cities and wrong move.
  • The narrative is sparse with little momentum—scriptless- but this is simple description- not a negative critique as the film is brilliant
  • Beautiful rural black and white photography—said to be inspired by walker evans photography—minimalist folk score—reminiscent of jarmusch in both aspects (this predates jarmusch of course) and its beautiful rural decay (paris texas director of course) not beautiful urban decay like jarmusch. This is more sprawling than jarmusch who, though a minimalist as well, is very structured and formally bound
  • Like the style by wenders, the two protagonists are aimless- one a drifter fixing rural movie houses and the other a suicidal depressive
  • The wipe edit is a mistake- it’s so strange in such a protracted and spaciously paced and styled work—if you change the transitions to slow dissolves to mirror the music and landscapes it’s a markedly better film
  • Sad meditation on the death of cinema (who the hell could think cinema was dying in 1976 with the USA new wave and the german new wave with wenders himself, Fassbinder and Herzog?) with these run down theaters—it’s a film about loss—past greatness (cinema, Germany, the past of these two men)- so many gorgeous set pieces in b/w photography- train stations, abandoned old printing presses, fair rides, it’s a travelogue like grapes of wrath and easy rider (scene in bike it’s impossible not to think of)
  • Shot sequentially— has the specs of the film to start the film which is strange (lens size, etc)
  • Meditation on self-discovery
  • I get what wenders is doing but not sure I need to see his characters take a dump on screen
  • “film is the art of seeing” might be a to on-the-nose line from the film as wenders talks about his style (this would bleed into the rest of his work including wings of desire which is a film about seeing)
  • Must-See top 5 quality of the year after 1 viewing