Until The End Of The World

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (Wenders, 1991)

Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date Dec 10, 2019

Review by Christopher S. Long

You might not expect a nearly five-hour movie ostensibly about the end of the world to be so playful, but director Wim Wenders sure seems to be having fun.

In “Until The End Of The World” (1991), Wenders and co-screenwriter Peter Carey take particular pleasure in mashing genres together and then dismantling the conventions of each of them. In most movies that open with a nuclear satellite crashing to earth, the possible extinction of the human race would loom rather large as a plot point, but it's mostly pushed to the background here as the film's characters have greater concerns, such as finding love and listening to good music. Once the international espionage thread kicks in, the film introduces the expected array of menacing tough guys from bank robbers to a hard-boiled detective, only to reveal that they're all softies at heart and maybe what they really want most is to meet new friends and have a good time. That's not to say there's nothing at stake in the story, rather that the film suggests that personal needs are paramount, transcending even the apocalypse.

Claire (Solveig Dommartin) stumbles out of a boozy, somnambulant party in Venice and onto a gondola that launches the first leg of a globetrotting journey that will take her to Paris, Lisbon, San Francisco, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, and Australia in her search for... something. She doesn't realize what that something is until it arrives in the form of Sam Farber (William Hurt), another world traveler and also a fugitive hounded by the U.S. government for stealing secret technology. As complications pile up, many characters wind up pursuing each other all around the world, though most of them are men in pursuit of the elusive Claire, most notably her ex-boyfriend Eugene (Sam Neill), a novelist who also serves as the film's narrator.

Claire falls in love with Sam, perhaps because she sees in him a better version of herself to which she aspires, a wanderer with a clear mission. Sam has stolen, or perhaps reclaimed, a camera that can process images so that they can be “seen” by the blind, including Sam's mother (Jeanne Moreau) who lives with Sam's scientist father (Max Von Sydow) in the Australian Outback where most of the film's many characters eventually wind up. Oh, by the way, the nuclear satellite explodes and destroys the world (or maybe not) after which everyone gets together to perform a few great songs under the wide-open Australian skies. The music itself may be the true purpose of their long and dangerous journey.

Wenders set his film about ten years in the future and correctly predicted that much of the world would mistake Dec 31, 1999 for the last day of the millennium (stop arguing– there was no 0 A.D). He and his design team also accurately envisaged a world where cars would navigate by GPS systems, information would be accessed through search engines, and people would stare obsessively at images on their tiny handheld devices. These speculations weren't unique to Wenders and some were extrapolations of 1990 trends, but they make the film seem cannily prescient now that its future world is our present and recent past.

Wenders also took the unusual step of writing to twenty of his favorite musicians to ask them to work on his film and, in so doing, to project their own music about ten years into the future. To his surprise, virtually everyone responded with interest, and the soundtrack is densely packed with hits from the likes of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, U2, R.E.M., Neneh Cherry, and many more.

The soundtrack album would prove to be a hit, but the film itself was a legendary flop on its initial release. Working with a then-massive budget of $24 million (some of which paid for shooting on Super 35 mm film), Wenders was pressured to lop his “ultimate road movie” down to a “mere” two-and-a-half hours for what he now refers to as the Reader's Digest version of the movie, one that lacked the humor, music, and rhythm he felt was essential to its structure. Wenders kept all the material needed to eventually release his intended 287-minute cut, a version which brought widespread praise from critics, completing a familiar journey from film maudit to beloved masterpiece (cf. “Heaven's Gate”).

The film's final act (roughly the last fifty minutes) strikes a more somber note than much of the rest of the film, and seems to me like its least successful stretch. Wenders has mentioned that the film was inspired in part by his concerns over a culture moving (circa 1990) from one based primarily on words to one centered on images. Eugene, as narrator, may fret about “the disease of images” as both Claire and Sam become increasingly addicted to watching their own digitized dreams play out on little screens, but “Until The End Of The World” is also an exuberant celebration of cinema, replete with overt references to the works of directors like Godard and Ozu, and populated with a superstar cast of art-house icons including Von Sydow, Moreau, Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, and David Gulpilil. If our culture is really bidding goodbye to language (a dubious claim) I don't think the film really posits this as either a disease or the apocalypse, but simply as a change that may generate both anxiety and exciting new opportunities. 

Video:

The film is presented in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. From the Criterion booklet: “Supervised by Wim Wenders and produced by the Wim Wenders Foundation, this digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on an ARRISCAN film scanner, from the Super 35 mm original camera negative at ARRI Film & TV Services in Berlin, where this film was also restored.”

I don't own any other version of this film on DVD or Blu-ray as a comparison point, but this 1080p transfer from Criterion looks fabulous, with sharp image resolution throughout and a rich color palette. Breaking the film up onto two Blu-rays has enabled Criterion to provide a high bitrate transfer that should please any viewer.

Audio:

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track was “remastered from the original 35 mm magnetic tracks the Wim Wenders Foundation and approved by the director.” It's robust and distortion-free and provides a fine presentation of the film's jam-packed soundtrack. Optional English SDH subtitles support the audio.

Extras:

The 287-minute film is broken into two parts over two separate Blu-ray discs. Extras are also spread out across both discs.

DISC ONE:

Most of the extras included on this 2-disc set are older features. However, the collection kicks off with a new interview (2019, 15 min.) with filmmaker Wim Wenders, whose discussion focuses mostly on the film's soundtrack. He shares his well-known obsession with music and talks about how he wrote letters to twenty of his favorite performers, asking them to contribute to the soundtrack of “Until The End Of The World.” Almost all of them did so. This feature also includes a separate interview (2019, 8 min.) with both Wenders and David Byrne.

We also get “The Song” (18 min.), a 1991 documentary by Uli M. Schueppel which follows the recording session for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' “(I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World.” It's a pretty typical studio recording doc, mostly of interest to Nick Cave fans.

Disc One also offers a collection of Deleted Scenes and Alternative Takes (31 min.), most scored to music from the film.

DISC TWO:

In a 2001 interview (31 min.) conducted by journalist Roger Willemsen, Wenders discusses the long gestation of the project, which began during his extended stay in Australian in 1977 when he fell in love with Aboriginal art and culture. He was also influenced by American plans for weaponizing space. He also talks about his frustrations with the truncated Reader's Digest version of the film he felt forced to release, and which flopped badly.

“Wim Wenders in Tokyo” (1990, 62 min.) documents the special-effects work (conducted in Tokyo) for the the high-definition video scenes featured in the film. It's interesting, but feels stretched out at an hour-long running time.

“Up-Down Under Roma” (1993, 6 min.) is a short interview with Wenders. Riding in the back of a traveling car, Wenders talks about his fondness for Australian Aboriginal culture.

The features wrap up with a Theatrical Trailer (2 min.)

The 32-page insert booklet features an essay by critic Bilge Ebiri and an essay about the film's popular soundtrack by critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky.

Final Thoughts:

I can't agree with the critical cohort who has branded the full-length version of “Until The End Of The World” as a masterpiece, but Wenders' original vision is one of both great ambition and great charm. Not to mention great music. Criterion's two-disc Blu-ray release provides a strong high-def transfer and a wide array of extras that give the film the loving presentation it deserves after being treated so poorly on its initial, butchered release.

My Top 20 Films Of The 2010s - Part Six

Are you as excited to reach the top ten as I am? Just say yes. You can read the previous part of my list here.

There are a few movies in my top ten that some of you people really dropped the ball on. Starting with number ten.

10. INHERENT VICE (Anderson, 2014)

Paul Thomas Anderson's pitch-perfect Thomas Pynchon adaptation couldn't help but win over the hearts and minds of cinephiles, yet somehow it mostly did. I couldn't have been more shocked to read dismissive reviews from reputable critics who found it boring, off-key, joyless, or whatever. I had no explanation for it then, and after about ten more viewings, I remain every bit as baffled.

Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) may be the most endearing protagonist of the decade, a stoner detective who still believes in the Utopian Dream of the '60s while also mourning its now-obvious loss as the calendar flips to 1970. Like the honorable cowboy in a world that no longer needs cowboys, Doc rides the high country of Los Angeles through a rough landscape of hippies, black-power activists, Neo-Nazi bikers, and rogue dentists on a quest for a missing husband (among others) and for the love of his ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston). The eccentric shaggy-dog story is hilarious, but is also imbued with an at-times overwhelming poignancy by the constant longing for that lost paradise, a feeling powerfully evoked by the film's opening image, a shot between two beach houses looking out at the placid water.

Anderson populates the film with fantastic supporting actors. From the instant she appears on screen, Jeannie Berlin's flinty Aunt Reet practically demands her own spin-off franchise. And as Bigfoot Bjornsen, the real L.A. cop who plays a TV cop, Josh Brolin provides an antagonist to match ol' Doc, equal parts authoritarian monster and pathetic coward. And Bigfoot sure knows how to thaw a frozen banana.

I loved “Inherent Vice” so much I raced back to the theater each of the next two days while I still had the opportunity to lose myself in its elegiac world on the big screen. And to soak up the killer soundtrack again. The movie also inspired me to read Thomas Pynchon, not just “Inherent Vice” but all of Pynchon, from “V.” through “Bleeding Edge.” “Mason & Dixon” is my favorite, in case you want to know. That alone makes “Inherent Vice” one of the films that has had the most direct and significant positive impact on my life. It's difficult to write about it without wanting to return for one more visit with Doc and the gang. Moto panakeiku!

9. HOLY MOTORS (Carax, 2012)

Director Leos Carax celebrates the archaic but adaptable machine known as the human body from the film's opening shots featuring Etienne-Jules Marey's 19th-century studies in locomotion. It can't be a coincidence that Carax chose Kylie Minogue, whose first pop hit was a cover of “The Loco-Motion,” for a major cameo, right?

Human (???) dynamo Denis Lavant proves to be a living, breathing Marey study himself, a lithe, feral body in constant motion who, as the multi-talented Monsieur Oscar, conducts a series of clandestine missions in Paris while being chauffeured in a limo (another sleek, archaic machine) by Edith Scob. M. Oscar's missions involve donning a motion-capture suit to write around with a remarkably pliable actress, literally chewing the scenery, and squeezing the hell out of an accordion in the most memorable musical number of the decade. There is truly no film performer in the world even remotely similar to Denis Lavant.

“Holy Motors” maintains its kinetic fury as it mourns losses both great and small, many of which involve the modern consumer's unquestioning embrace of anything small and portable and convenient because, as we all know, convenience is the mother of all great art. For those of you who think that all the fussing over the digital transformation of cinema (and other aspects of culture and history) is just a bunch of Neo-Luddite hand-wringing, all I have to say to you is : trois, douze, merde!

My Top 20 Films Of The 2010s - Part Five

That's right, I'm only halfway through my list so far. It's not easy to come up with twenty good films from just a single decade's worth of cinema. I kid, of course. Mostly. You can read the previous installment here.

12. EX LIBRIS: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY (Wiseman, 2017)

The end of any decade guarantees the resurgence of one of film criticism's most storied traditions: complaints about best-of lists. Lists, you see, are an abomination in the eyes of the film gods for an unholy host of reasons, ranging from their exclusionary nature to their alleged arbitrariness. I appreciate concerns over how the propagation of canons can promote cultural ossification, but I have never understood how composing a list is any more arbitrary than organizing an argument into sentences and paragraphs. I suspect that some people just hate numbers.

I do, however, hold one strong prejudice about any Best-of-the-Decade list. If it doesn't include anything by Frederick Wiseman, the greatest living American filmmaker, I'm not sure I can take it too seriously. If I want to be generous, I'll admit there's an inherent challenge in selecting a single title from a director who has spent over half a century producing such a rigorously coherent body of work in both style and content. Wiseman documentaries don't blur together by any means, but they do feel like serial installments of a grand, unified masterwork, though one in a constant state of gradual evolution. It can be tough to choose just one chapter for inclusion on a list.

As great as “At Berkeley” (2013) and “National Gallery” (2014) and “In Jackson Heights” (2015) are, I didn't have too much difficulty in picking “Ex Libris” as my favorite Wiseman of the decade and the reason is simple. I love libraries. Also, it feels like I spend part of every week reading social media posts complaining about public libraries being wastes of taxpayer money now that they've been rendered obsolete by the glories of the internet. I very much want to punch every one of these troglodytes in the face.

Wiseman chose a better option. He made a documentary that highlights how relevant and vital the New York Public Library is to the daily lives of many thousands, if not millions, of citizens. The great chronicler of institutions crafts the expected comprehensive study of the NYPL from Patience and Fortitude to the many branch libraries that host drama classes and job fairs and house massive photo archives in addition to being just “storage spaces for books.” Not that there's anything not entirely magnificent about “just” providing a storage space for books. That's really one of my primary goals in life, to be honest.

From administrators debating budgets to the janitors who maintain these shared grounds, thousands of people work together to provide information to the public. It may not be enough to combat the disinformation even a single person can spread on social media, but it's all part of a noble and essential fight. I doubt anyone who wants to defund libraries would have the sense or patience to actually watch “Ex Libris” but... man, I really punch those meatheads in the face.

11. UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Apichatpong, 2010)

Are you living your first life or your tenth? Is heaven overrated? Are you dead or just on TV and how would you tell the difference? Do catfish make the best lovers?

“Uncle Boonmee” raises all of these questions, or maybe I'm just remembering them from previous Apichatpong Weerasethakul movies. It doesn't really matter. All timelines converge in the Thai master's Palme d'or winning journey into the remote forests of northern Thailand where relatives travel to visit Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) who is dying of kidney cancer. His life may be ending soon and his world may be severely restricted by his illness, but he's still got plenty of things left to do and people still to see.

Boonmee's dead wife shows up early on, possibly to help to guide him to the underworld, but it's best not to get hung up on literal interpretations. A monkey-ghost with glowing red eyes appears to be Boonmee's son, but he's also a manifestation of the cheapo horror films that thrilled the director in his youth (and maybe still as an adult) and now infuse his animist philosophical ponderings both about letting go of this life and the need to cherish every last experience in it, even if there may be many more lives still to follow. That may not sound like the description of a comedy, but “Uncle Boonmee” is every bit as funny as it is contemplative, a delicate balancing act Apichatpong has perfected on his path to becoming one of the most beloved directors in the world. Please make more movies, Joe!

I was as thrilled as everyone else when I heard about Apichatpong's Palme d'or victory, but when I finally got to see “Uncle Boonmee” my initial impression was that the jury had awarded him for one of his lesser films. I'm still inclined to think that “Mysterious Object At Noon” (2000), “Tropical Malady” (2004), and especially the magisterial “Syndromes and a Century” (2006) are superior films, but I've still got ol' Boonmee up here at #12 for this decade. So what I'm telling you is that Apichatpong Weerasethakul is amazing and you really need to watch those other movies. Either for the first time or the tenth. It doesn't really matter.

My Top 20 Films Of The 2010s - Part Four

I know it's been difficult for so very many of you to wait so long for this next installment in my top films of the 2010s series, but I had to take a brief break out of respect for Bette Davis week. Ms. Davis wouldn't take kindly to anyone stealing the spotlight from her, and I respect that.

In the previous part, I shared my appreciation for a dying French king and for an Iranian filmmaker just hanging out with his pet iguana. This time I want to write about:

14. HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING (Ross, 2018)

Director/producer/writer/cinematographer/sound designer/editor RaMell Ross chronicles the lives of two young African-American men and their families in rural Alabama over the course of several years. That description doesn't even begin to do justice to Ross's remarkable feature-length debut.

Combining impressionistic imagery with on-screen text and a dense, evocative soundtrack, Ross crafts a unique audiovisual language that allows viewers to adapt to its rhythms. Ross juxtaposes the personal with the celestial, sometimes playfully like when he cuts from a Chick-Fil-A waffle fry to the ghostly image of a partially eclipsed sun. The result is a movie that feels both entirely grounded in quotidian life and transcendent, a philosophical work that I would think any viewer could connect to on a personal and visceral level.

In a stream-lined 78 minutes, “Hale County” expresses both unbridled joy and inconceivable tragedy. Ross has made a cinematic poem of radical empathy, and the most beautiful documentary I've seen in years. I rewatched it recently to see is any of the magic of the first-time viewing had worn off, but the film has only grown in power for me. No single movie can claim to be the definitive American film of its time, but I'm unable to think of a more perceptive and moving portrait of American life in the 21^st century than “Hale County.” There's plenty of reason to be skeptical when the word “visionary” is deployed by critics to describe a movie, but believe it this time.

13. THE LIGHTHOUSE (Eggers, 2019)

Screw it. I'm putting it on my list. I wasn't going to. But I am.

I really need to see “The Lighthouse” again. I might be significantly overrating it just because I love its gauzy black-and-white look so much. Or because the movie is so endlessly quotable  - “'Tis begrimed and bedabbled!” Or even just because of that all-time great Willem Dafoe rant (“Hark!”) that I've now watched on YouTube over 100 times. (Ed. Note: 102 times now. I watched it twice more while writing this.)

I'm not certain the movie really goes anywhere in the end either, but it just doesn't matter to me. In Robert Eggers' follow-up to his remarkable debut feature, “The Witch” (2016), the director creates such a tactile hermetic space – a claustrophobic fever-dream reeking of sea-brine and “goddamn fahts” all swirling around in a giant pox-ridden phallus - that there really is no better place to go. Some critics found that unsatisfying and hollow, viewing “The Lighthouse” a curated collection of stylish signifiers that signify nothing in particular.

Maybe they're right. I really do need to watch it again. All I know is that I can only think of a tiny handful of recent movies that generated more pure audiovisual pleasure (oh man, this sound design!) for me in the immediate moment of viewing. I'm in awe of how gracefully the film shifts tone wildly not just from sequence to sequence, but even within scenes. The “Hark!” rant ranges from slapstick comedy to Lovecraftian horror to “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” domestic psychological warfare all in the course of a few minutes. And God what a punchline (“All right, have it your way...”)

I love every single choice Willem Dafoe makes in this movie; every time he clenches his pipe upside down in his rotted teeth, every time he delivers his trademark toast (“Should pale death with treble dread...”), and every bilge-stained bristle of his bushy beard. Pattinson is sensational too. In almost any other film, he'd be the only performer anyone would be talking about, but Dafoe is so damned elemental that his sheer force of will cannot be denied. He's still in that lighthouse right now, just fahtin' up a storm. Pair this with his work in “At Eternity's Gate” (2018) and I'm not sure there's an actor working at a higher level and choosing more interesting roles than Dafoe right now.

I already feel bad enough for only briefly mentioning Pattinson's brilliance, so I'm going to finish with a shout-out to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. This black-and-white photography – washed out in patches, grubby but starkly beautiful – looks like nothing else I've seen in a theater in years. I don't care too much about awards, but we can go on ignoring them all if Blaschke gets shut out.