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"I'd like to talk about loneliness." An aerial shot of drizzly Boppard rooftops gives way to a somber apartment (the passing helicopter is glimpsed through a window) in a quintessential Wim Wenders opening: Sixties rock on the record player, fists put through the glass, a tear wiped away. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship circa 1975, this Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler) has waited too long to leave home, lack of experience leaves the aspiring novelist with only blank pages. "Don't lose that unrest and discomfort of yours. You'll need them if you want to write." From the Rhine to the Zugspitze, the joke is that of an antisocial meanderer who finds himself at the center of a flock of morose blocked artists. The mute street juggler with staring Keane eyes (Nastassja Kinski) and her elderly companion (Hans Christian Blech), with his harmonica and nosebleeds and Nazi memories. The Viennese poet (Peter Kern) has more sincerity than talent, the widowed industrialist (Ivan Desny) interrupts his suicide long enough to expound on "die toten seelen von Deutschland." Largely shorn of the gentle charm of the bracketing films in his Road Trilogy, Wenders' middle entry reveals an angrier edge aimed at the various wrong moves of protagonist and country alike. Dreams recalled and invented, "the end of longing and the end of the world," the philosopher's baleful side. A patient camera follows the gang up a hillside into a Friedrich vista in the most virtuosic shot, amid Frankfurt's concrete expanses there's the desire to simply throw the disturbing past overboard. Quarreling with the actress (Hanna Schygulla) cannot quite pierce the shell of despair (Chronicle of Mary Magdalena Bach plays on the telly during their row), the denouement scans for a trace of thawing. "I think it's become a political story." The title of the following chapter comes to Wilhelm in his sleep, "Im lauf der zeit..." Cinematography by Robby Müller.
--- Fernando F. Croce |