The movie itself, unfortunately, is not as compelling as the tempest that went into its making. Wim Wenders filmed “Until the End of the World” in five months in 15 cities in eight countries on four continents, following two lovers played by actors who were reportedly not on speaking terms with one another. The movie itself, unfortunately, is not as compelling as the tempest that went into its making. Once the film gets bogged down in the outback, however, it comes to a virtual stop. I was idealistic and about to leave home for college. Please enter your birth date to watch this video: You are not allowed to view this material at this time. Now, in this full version, it’s the first half that’s less interesting. It was a logical progression for the travel-obsessed director of Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road and Paris, Texas; a planet-wide victory lap for the German auteur after Wings of Desire, his masterpiece set in a divided Berlin. Things get weird, though, when it is discovered that the technology can be used to record a person’s dreams. An eye on the future … William Hurt and Solveig Dommartin in Until the End of the World. There is none of the narrative urgency that would help in drawing us through to the end of the 157 minutes. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. His screenplays have a tendency to begin with enigmatic figures appearing out of nowhere, and to continue with a series of random events which eventually surrender an insight. (The soundtrack album did much better.) What begins as a natural desire to understand one’s own past becomes an addiction to nostalgia. Laugh now, but at the time the soundtrack album, with artists including REM, U2 and kd lang, still fit that bill. If that's the point, why make a film at all? Rewatching the film’s third act, light on narrative as our characters tussle with the heartbreak of their lost youth, brought all these memories back. Even with the apocalypse, though, his view isn't despairing. When that person rewatches the tape, a processor compares the two brainwaves and spits out some sort of cognition, which can then be plugged into another person’s head. Until the End of the World book. With satellite and radio transmissions down, the assembled westerners and tight-knit Indigenous Australian tribe bunker down for months, playing music, doing science experiments, creating a community that is inclusive of all customs. It was a wonderful moment to be into the arts: Nirvana were vanguards at destroying popular rock music; the first Sundance graduates were revolutionising independent American film; the fall of the Berlin Wall erased the nuclear panic of childhood. The lengthy sequences of pixellated , almost inscrutable images that project ecstatic glee and existential frustration on to the characters are breathtaking. Scrutiny of these images becomes psychologically addictive, and eventually physically destructive, to the dreamer. (Lots of data on thin plastic cards; Bluetooth and Dropbox are less cinematic.). Until the End of the World takes place in late 1999, with most of the globe in a panic about an out-of-control nuclear satellite. In love with him and determined to discover what makes him tick, Dommartin tracks him from one destination to the next, while the bad guys bounce around in the background, promising a plot fulfillment they never deliver. While driving home to Paris – where her nice-guy boyfriend, Gene (Sam Neill), struggles to write a novel – she crashes into two bank robbers. She ends up agreeing to smuggle money for them, but meets Trevor McPhee (William Hurt), an American straight out of a film noir who is being followed by an Australian in a similar trench-coat get up. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Sometimes that works. Good road movies, like “Kings of the Road” and “Paris, Texas,” and inexplicable ones, like this one. Until the End of the World movie reviews & Metacritic score: In 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. DVD/Blu-ray Release Calendar: December 2019. In 2015, their zombie-like wanderings, as they clutch handheld screens, take on new meaning. The movie arrives at the Outback, a place where oral traditions have survived for centuries, where the aborigine people tell stories to one another and move in and out of dreamtime. The film has already introduced us to picture phones and cars that call their owners by name; now we find technology that allows machines to visualize human dreams. That’s part of the message gleaned from Wim Wenders’s Until the End of the World, the 1991 film that is only now getting a US theatrical release for its full, almost-five-hour version. But this movie has always had its eye on the future’s potential. Read the Empire Movie review of Until The End Of The World. That’s part of the message gleaned from Wim Wenders’s Until the End of the World, the 1991 film that is only now getting a US theatrical release for its full, almost-five-hour version. he end of the world won’t come from a nuclear blast, but from an abundance of selfies. The whole gang ends up in the Australian outback just in time for an atomic explosion – and for the movie to take a wild detour. • The director’s cut of Until the End of the World is part of a Wim Wenders retrospective at New York’s IFC Center, 28 August-24 September, then touring 15 cities in North America. Wenders gathered around him his actors and a core crew of 17 technicians, flew from one city to another, picked up local crews, and shot on the run. Back when smartphones, GPS devices and open European borders were considered sci-fi, the two-and-a-half-hour version of this futurist’s detective story was impressive. Trevor (whose real name is Sam) was on the road collecting images with a strange device his mad scientist father (Max von Sydow) had created for his blind wife (Jeanne Moreau). In the outback we discover Hurt’s father and mother (official cinematic icons Max von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau) living in an underground laboratory where von Sydow is attempting to provide sight for his blind wife through an array of high-tech, High-Def television inventions. It is a wise lesson; one, indeed, this film might have profited from. Back when smartphones, GPS devices and open European borders were considered sci-fi, the two-and-a-half-hour version of this futurist’s detective story was impressive. Based on the novel of the same name, TILL THE END OF THE WORLD revolves around two souls (Mark Chao, Yang Zishan) stranded after a plane crash who must fight for survival. The camera records images while plugged into a wearer’s brain. As the satellite inexorably spins toward its final resting place, the William Hurt character continues his secret personal mission, which takes him from European locations (Venice, Paris) to San Francisco and points in Asia before finally leading him to that mecca of metaphysical motherlodes, the Australian outback. Of course, Wenders could not have known about any of that when he made this film, which was a financial flop on its initial release. The movie itself, unfortunately, is not as compelling as the tempest that went into its making. Until the End of the World includes three legendary bands that were defunct by the time it was released—Talking Heads and Can, but also Berlin-based goth-adjacent outfit Crime & … At the end, there is, perhaps, a moral to be found. The film has an eye on then-futuristic technology, most of which has come to fruition. The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. The first half of the film is, essentially, Claire hunting Trevor down – from Paris to Berlin to Lisbon to Moscow to Beijing to Tokyo to San Francisco, with other stops along the way.