Harry Dean Stanton. On walkabout (for 4 years)
Haggard and disheveled. Which is ok while he’s being the mysterious (possibly mad) mute in the first 20 minutes.
But i don’t think he cuts it as Nastasia Kinsky’s tragic hubby. He doesn’t look the part. Just a bit too stringy and, well – old.
He sounds the part ok. I had a tape of the Ry Cooder soundtrack and his voice is almost beautiful on that. But he looks too much of a dawg really. He becomes less interestingly mysterious as the film goes on.
And the film does go on. Far too long. (Nearly two and a half hours) I definitely wanted it to end sooner than it did (in contrast to Alice in the Cities, which i didn’t want to end)
Unfortunately I was comparing it a lot with Alice in the Cities. They’re similar sorts of films. Both road movies in which a solitary bloke takes off with a young kid in search of a maternal female.
But this doesn’t have the guileless charm of Alice. It does feel like it’s being pushed purposefully into its aimlessness. The alienation looks too pretty, the estrangement too obvious.
I’ve seen these cowboy landscapes far too often. I’m bored with how familiar they – and the U.S.A – are.
And the Ry Cooder soundtrack sounds too familiar now also. I got sick of listening to it eventually. So it was getting in the way (like too many soundtracks tend to do)
I’m puzzled. Wim Wenders has this love/hate relationship with America. He moans about how commercialism has robbed it of it’s soul. And yet he can’t help but be in thrall to some nostalgia kick he has about the way it used to be (in the times when Henry Fonda was Abe Lincoln)
He indoctrinates his films with Americanisms. Well, contaminates them – thats how i see it. When he sticks to what he knows (Europe) and where his heart is (Germany) his films always seem more authentic.
I’m looking forward to seeing his other road movie (set in Germany) “Kings of the Road”. And I’m expecting to like it as much as i did Alice in the Cities.
His fixation with American culture makes me go cold with feelings of estrangement. Which i suppose is what he wants you/me to feel.
This film has been called a “masterpiece”. It won the Golden Palm in Cannes.
But give me Alice in the Cities any day.
Dir: Wim Wenders, U.S/Germany
6/10
