Until The End Of The World

Until the End of the World (1991)

Runtime: Around 290 minutes (!)

Directed by: Wim Wenders

Starring: Sam Neill, Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt, Rudiger Vogler, Ernie Dingo

From: Several production companies, including Warner Brothers

Yes, I actually watched a near five hour movie late last night; I did not love it like some do, but I don't regret spending all that time seeing this either. Let me give you details below:

Late Saturday night I discovered via someone I know that on TCM late last night, they would be playing this movie... it was at 2AM since for years now that is when Turner Classic Movies showed a foreign film or two each week except for holiday reasons or it is Oscar month in February. The reason why I watched this film is that it was the Director's Cut, something that has been rumored to be a Criterion release for a few years now but it hasn't happened; this is a blind guess but looking at the soundtrack full of famous bands, I will use history and presume that is the hangup.

Oh, and if you don't know, the cut of this movie from Wim Wenders is (and this is a guess as it appeared as if some of the end credits may have been sped up) around FOUR HOURS AND FIFTY MINUTES LONG*. Yes, I stayed up until almost 7 AM to watch this, as I am a Luddite who doesn't have a DVR, that is the only way to see this version and I had nothing to do Monday proper. I understand it played at some arthouse joints late in 2015 but I don't know how many people got to experience that. This is my initial experience with any cut of the film; I've seen precious little Wenders before but I should try to fix that; I presume there are enough people reading this who knows his most highly regarded work and thus know why I need to watch more of his career's output.

I've talked recently about how modern Hollywood is lame and how most of the movies they realize are homogenized and focus-grouped to death, and the creativity of directors is stifled. I stand by that, but there are times where a director does need to be reigned in as otherwise they can be self-indulgent and out of control. Considering that Wenders said he wanted to “make the ultimate road movie” and its length and how Wenders was told to stop filming and that ruined his plans to shoot in Africa and South America and even he admitted after the fact that the demand for him to stop was the right call.

The plot: there's a lot but I'll try to be brief. It is the far-flung future of 1999 and a Eurobabe named Claire ( Solveig Dommartin) stumbles into a globe-trotting adventure involving a lot of money that she was given by two robbers for helping them out after a heist, William Hurt stealing an experimental device that would allow his wife to see, Claire's ex-lover Eugene (Sam Neill) and other things; there's also plenty of ennui and people having an existential crises. As it wasn't that far into the future, it wasn't incredibly futuristic, although I was amused to see vehicles that we definitely did not have in 1999-and those General Motors “Dustbuster” minivans (the Oldsmobile Silhouette, the Chevy Lumina and the Pontiac Trans Sport ) were all over this movie-and the '91 guess of what the '99 version of Skype and GPS would be.

The movie is well-made. It does look nice (especially in the print they showed on TCM, which was from a 4K scan) and there are some beautiful sights filmed. There are a few scenes I would rate quite highly as they were unforgettable. And I was able to make it through all 280 minutes with my biggest hindrance being fighting off sleep rather than becoming bored. Plus, it has a nice international cast and it's always nice seeing Max Von Sydow in a film. I just thought that it suffered from self-indulgence and it did not need to be that long. I don't know if the shorter versions released to the cineplex way back when would be preferable to me or not. Personally, the first half of the film is better than the second half, and what an unexpected ending. But I know that there are plenty who love the Director's Cut so hopefully one day it does come out on Blu so more people are able to give it a shot, as I imagine some of you would rate it quite highly.

One last thing: the soundtrack has always received a lot of positive buzz: a notable group of artists all contributed new songs and they were supposed to guess “what they think they would sound like in 1999.” Those guesses weren't always accurate by any means but that is OK as the musicians included everyone from Talking Heads, Lou Reed, and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to Elvis Costello, Neneh Cherry, and R.E.M. I liked most of the songs and the overall score from Graeme Revell.

* The version shown on TCM doesn't include anything like an intermission or two ending credits and two recaps of the film; it was shown as if it was a trilogy of regular movies, you see.