Monday, November 26, 2007

Journey made the Wrong Way


Wim Wender's fifth film, Wrong Move or Falsche Bewegung, was a modern interpretation of an 19th century Goethe novel recast in modern times. Peter Handke later collaborated with Wenders in Der Himmel uber Berlin (Wings of Desire) Characters in Wrong Move show up with dreamlike predestination similar to Wings in this interpretation/inspiration of Goethe's coming of age story or Bildingsroman, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

As Wenders explains in his voice over commentary, he and Handke had the premise is that the romantic notion of going out into the world to learn about it, as was the case in Wilhelm's Apprenticeship is no longer important. In fact. it is now the wrong move. One no longer has to learn by moving out. "The world is no longer a theater for experience," as Wenders says in the voice over and they wanted to turn this romantic notion on its ear in the brash New German Cinema Zeitgiest of young men setting out to prove something in the world themselves.

The first half or so of the journey is filled with a sense of hope and newness. Wilhelm says he wants to be a writer but he has no experience, no ideas or ideals. An ensemble builds around him, a former Nazi officer who claims to be a singer and punctuates life with a harmonica traveling with a young girl acrobat (Nastassia Kinski--her first role at 13 never speaking), Hanna Schygulla as a listless actress, and a large and awful poet from Austria who attaches himself to the group. Things fall apart. Our apprentice poet is unable to empathize and see the folks who surround him. Wilhelm can't get out of his own head. He doesn't take the opportunity to listen and give to the folks around him. Was his move wrong? Maybe less what it was as opposed to what he did with it.

With a very small crew, long takes, using a Renault being pushed as a dolly, dialog about dreams and meaning with lots of wonderful choices in location and light, and 100% live sound, Wrong Move still impresses as a small and earnest film. And one whose modern Germany feels eternal caught in time. The look and feel of the country in 74 does not feel so foreign to my own frame of experience in the country 25, 30 years later.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:13 PM
Comments: Post a Comment