Decheser mentioning the beauty of digital artifacts in scrambled web cam footage. That reference sprang some thinking about Wim Wender’s sci-fi classic, ‘Until the End of the World’ featuring digital scrambled visualizations (profoundly helping blind people to see through some new science). It’s a magnificent movie, very low key and it really deserves a viewing. Noteworthy sound track.
At its core, this is a film about the sometimes-destructive nature of obsession – the central character’s obsession with the object of her desire, her former lover’s obsession with quantifying their relationship, the obsession of bounty hunters with their quarry, the obsession of a son’s desperate hope for his father’s approval and that father’s obsession with cutting-edge science taking precedence over any interpersonal considerations – with the exception of his obsessive love for his wife. This film is an epic, dream-like study of the human cost of all-consuming passion.
It’s also a lot of fun. Wim Wenders was smart enough to place the timeline of events in this film no more than ten years on from shooting, thus taking advantage of newly-emergent technology showcased in ingenious ways as well as avoiding the dated look that plagues many science fiction films a decade or two after their release.
The soundtrack is amazing. I have personally worn-out or loaned-out seven separate cds and cassettes. It has been the soundtrack of my life for the better part of 15 years.
As a final word I would like to add that this film resembles a lucid dream state, one of those dreams you awaken from and attempt to describe (“…Well, then I was in Australia, and there were these guys chasing me so I got in a plane and then I was in a laboratory, except it was in a cave…”)
This film begins with a dream and it ends with several recovering dream addicts adrift on a planet which appears to be recovering from a nightmare, a nightmare they seemed to have missed entirely in the all-encompassing pursuit of their heart’s desires.
The soundtrack is probably my often played music.
Now if there was a way to get hold of a region 1 version of the directors cut, that would be terriffic
I heard the directors cut is only available in PAL region.
I had forgotten about this one pal. Thanks for the reminder. I remember one of those midnight movie showings at the little cinema around the corner from the art college. Incredible movie.
[youtube ftWQP0Hgr1g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftWQP0Hgr1g youtube] This is a favorite scene in the movie when death and happiness mix in the most Wendersed way during this fantastic unplugged version of Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) doing Kirsty MacColl's "Thank you for the days".
[youtube ZRp5rRIN4B8 youtube]
Stunning seven minutes sequence during a pivotal end scene in the movie. [youtube G3kFngoVO4s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3kFngoVO4s youtube]