[Film Review] Until the End of the World (1991)

English Title: Until the End of the World
Original Title: Bis ans Ende der Welt
Year: 1991
Country: Germany, Australia, France, USA
Language: English, French, Japanese, German, Mandarin
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Director: Wim Wenders
Writers:
Peter Carey
Wim Wenders
Solveig Dommartin
Michael Almereyda
Music: Graeme Revell
Cinematography: Robby Müller
Editor: Peter Przygodda
Cast:
Solveig Dommartin
William Hurt
Sam Neill
Rüdiger Vogler
Max von Sydow
Jeanne Moreau
Chick Ortega
Ernie Dingo
David Gulpilil
Eddy Mitchell
Paul Livingston
Justine Saunders
Lois Chiles
Kylie Belling
Jimmy Little
Chishû Ryû
Kuniko Miyake
Elena Prudnikova
Allen Garfield
Naoto Takenaka
Adelle Lutz
Rating: 7.5/10

Saw Wim Wenders’ epic passion project on a big screen in its 179-minute European version (not the 280-minute trilogy version), UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, a fin-de-siècle globe-trotter, is the ultimate road movie, traversing through four continents and a handful of countries (from France, to Germany, Russia, China, Japan, then USA, finally lending its feet on Australian outback), it astounds audience with its gorgeous celluloid richness and a surprisingly prescient depiction of image addiction in the then-forthcoming digital era.

Near future in 1999, French girl Claire Tourneur (the late Dommartin, Wenders’ then companion and helpmate in conceiving the original story) is hit by a windfall (conveniently becomes an accomplice of two bank robbers and shares their munificent plunder) and falls in with a mysterious man named Trevor McPhee (Hurt, well cocooned in a melancholic vulnerability that betrays unsaid past woes), who evades an armed pursuer and filches some of Claire’s ill-gotten cash afterward. But Claire is intrigued by him, with the help of a German private eye Philip Winter (Vogler), they trace Trevor around the world, soon joined by Claire’s neglected boyfriend Eugene Fitzpatrick (Neill), and Trevor’s real identity is disclosed as Sam Farber, the son of a reclusive scientist Henry Farber (a sprightly uncompromising von Sydow) and has an expensive bounty on his name for possessing a cutting-edge device designed by Henry.

Claire’s infatuation with Sam drives her to flee with him on the spot and leave both Philip and Eugene behind, their cat-and-mouse escapade finally ends in Australia, right when a contentious Indian nuclear satellite is shot down by a USA missile, its NEMP effect wipes out nearly all electronic device worldwide, which marks a doomed trepidation of an apocalypse. In the outback, living among the aborigine, are Henry and his blind wife, Sam’s mother Edith (Moreau, gracing the picture with a becalming poise and warmth), and a family reunion closes the first half.

The second half of the film (mostly) firmly constrains its itchy feet on the massive Australian desert topography and distances itself from the central romance and veers into Henry’s unflinching experimentation, through the aforementioned device, at first he tries to synchronize Sam’s memories (which he has garnered all around the globe with Edith’s relatives), then transmit them to Edith’s, so that Edith can finally see the world she is living in (trenchantly, the revelation is not all positive as Edith admits the world is not looking good at all), and later, after a bereavement (the experiment takes a heavy physical toll on its human subjects), Henry beavers away in recording and then visualizing human dreams (too ambitious and unethical an endeavor that repels his aboriginal lab team), which severely effects its subjects’ mental states, Henry, Sam and Claire all become obsessively addicted to their visualized dream sequences, they all drift apart and are immured in their benumbed isolation with a digital device in hand (how prophetic!), only Claire is dragooned into a withdrawal process thanks to a persistent Eugene, who has taken the duty as our narrator from the very beginning and a scribe duly puts these quixotical events into words.

Much blood and sweat is pretty in evidence invested in this irrefutably stunning cinematic adventure (also capitalizing on the exotic/futuristic localities, Japan’s capsule hotel and pinball parlor, fictional visual phone booth, for instance), in conjunction with the FX team’s avant-garde welding of both analogue and digital technology in rendering the pixelated, elusive memory/dream sequences, to say nothing of its zeitgeist-conveying soundtrack, a potpourri contributed by quintessential New Wave/avant-garde acts like Talking Heads, R.E.M., Can, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Patti Smith, Depeche Mode, etc., along with U2’s imposing titular theme song. However, when all is said and done, even running only around 3 hours, UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD’s epic length feels too long for its own good and too indulgent in Wenders’ over-confident strides, in spite of the post-modernity and topicality evoked by its marvelously envisioned contents.

referential entries: Wenders’ THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977, 7.8/10), WINGS OF DESIRE (1987, 8.5/10).