🎬 Portrait of the director : WIM WENDERS / essay

It is undeniable that the entire work of German filmmaker Wim Wenders expresses a peculiar worldview, a series of intertwined motifs that we can easily read in the works from a few short films he made during the studies at the Academy for Television and Film (1967-70) titles from the 1990s, which clearly signify the period of the creative crisis. Everything in his opus is interesting for studying, because it shows in a nutshell how much the society from which the individual grows up decisively, but most often not directly, influences the design of the guidelines of his creativity.

In the first period of work Wim Wenders, along with Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Völker Schlöndorff, was a prominent representative of the new German film, a film direction that attempted to create a new tradition. It tried to overcome the vast historical, and therefore, the cultural gap created by the heavy burden of the German national myth, which became the main cause of war destruction.

These young authors had to be influenced by the American mass culture, especially film, which they expressed in two ways - learning from this taken tradition, but also bouncing against it in an effort to create their own creative identity. Perhaps more than any representatives of this generation, Wenders, in his entire opus, mostly showed the influence of the American genre film, overlapped them with his own legacy and shaped works whose sensitivity was not conditioned by either national or geographical determinants.


 

An individual on the edge

The autopsy of a German post-war society was certainly a suitable pretext on which Wenders worldview emerged, in which social tradition is largely indirectly read, and protagonists sometimes resemble the heroes of the American film.
The main character of his films is a lonely individual who is willingly on the social margin, who doesn't feel affiliated with any community, which is effectively underlined by his constant movement. These heroes are not prone to action, as a matter of fact, they are closer to contemplation, and even their movement rarely has a certain direction.

In cities they can't manage, they are more inclined to open spaces. They are not alienated from the environment through which they pass, but from themselves. The duality of the denial of home and of their own personality, for which they crave at the same time, precludes their wandering, even an escape, in which they are not persecuted from outside, for some particular reason, but inside with their own structure that doesn't allow them to completely calm down. Such a hero has neither emotional nor historical hiding, and his despair is often two - there are no moments in the past that he could remember, and the future is too foggy to surrender without reserve.

Hard-headed solitude

Wenders's heroes are prone to stubborn loneliness, and this is largely the vague fear that they need to face (eg, Paris, Texas, 1984), or just trying to live with it (Alice in the Cities, 1974 or the The American Friend, 1977). Sometimes in his films there is a motive for male friendship (eg, Kings of the Road, 1976), and sometimes the hero wonders with a child (Alice in the cities and Paris, Texas).

Due to the internal structure, his coexistence in any form of communion (friend, wife, child) is almost impossible, with only a late exception (Wings of Desire , 1987), and the complete realization of a love relationship is unachievable (Until the End of the World , 1992; Lisbon Story , 1995;).
The security of home or permanent work is doubtful ( Faraway, So Close!, 1993), and the spouse can prove to be a complete alien due to material gain ( The End of Violence , 1997). Families, if they exist, are usually crochet ( The Scarlet Letter , 1972), or communication is insufficient in them.

Furthermore, Wim Wenders films without any difficulty show an exceptional interest in the cultural aspects of contemporary life. Painting, literary and, above all, musical influences are almost continuously expressed in a direct or indirect way throughout the whole of the opus.
Music, first and foremost rock'n'roll, is not only a scene, but also an inseparable part of the story, because it is often the most expressive tool of the feelings of the protagonists themselves ( Summer in the City, 1970), or, ultimately, by their creative self-realization (Buena Vista Social Club ; 1999).

Literary influences are also relatively easy to spot in multiple titles. In a few cases, the collaborator was the prominent Austrian writer Peter Handke.

Identity and worldview

The relationship to the assumed American cultural heritage is observed in the dual, direct or just in the context of multiple films. In some works, the director enjoys almost all of Germany and American iconography, but Wenders is aware that national identity and personal worldview must be preserved with strong influence, as this is certainly not without any shortcomings. In films of the plot located in the United States, while the protagonist is European, his uncertainty is also revealed, due to the different social background. Titles from the American period of creativity are picturesque by an indirect commentary on the social situation (Hammet; Paris, Texas).

It's not difficult to indicate the prominent directors who have marked the work of Wim Wenders. It's about personalities that pulled out of uncompromising standpoints from the Hollywood environment, such as Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, John Ford, or Fritz Lang, and it's not easy to forget the strongly expressed influence of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, in which we find the propensity for contemplation and the pronounced duality between family affection and travel.

This was my translation from Croatian to English from Matica hrvatska article ''Portret redatelja: Wim Wenders''