Until the end of the world

Many people hated it, but I am one of the few who loved it. I couldn't take my eyes off the beautiful Australian landscape. I bought the sound track album of the movie in 1992 in Stuttgart in Germany. Two years later I got to see the film at Paul's Apartment in 16th and 7th avenue. When I got back from my vacation in 1991, it was already 1993, I did not have a place to stay and Lubna welcomed for me to stay in her little place with her brother, but when I got there I realized that place was even too small for them to stay cause I even had my film box "Veils of Maya" (Sihina Deshayen) with me.

Then I called Paul, and he said I could come and stay with him as long as I like, like Lubna who has always been an amazing friend to me, Paul was the same, except he did not mind try to sleep with most of my female friends. Well that is Paul. If anyone wants to picture Paul, he would be the "Dude" from Big Lebowzki the movie by Coen Brothers. Paul and I go way back to 1988, since I met Andrena, and I became a roommate with Alexandra Miroshlawa in Jersy City, and all the cool parties me Paul, Denise and all of us were attending to.

Paul always had a great vision with colors, I love his paintings the way he was using his gold and Silver in the paintings. Sometimes I would buy a pack of Busch beer, which was only fifty cents a can in 1988-89, would walk up to his apartment and we would drink and smoke a lot.

Then we go into these crazy conversations about the dimensions. We always talked about fifth dimension. For about months we talked about it, being so high and comfortable, then one day it hit me, that we have skipped one dimension and talked about the fifth and we have been completely off the hook with the dimensions. So we gave up on it being so disappointed and time wasted.

So I took the liberty of crashing on Paul's couch in the living room and watching videos in the night. One breezy afternoon in the fall of 1993 I rented "Until the end of the world" from Kim's video at avenue' next to "Cafe Limbo", and watched it at Paul's apartment.

It was not as good as Wim Wenders other movies like "Paris Texas", Wings of Desire or even "American Friend" but visually it was most stunning and like many Wender's movies, it was a cool road movie. I think this is the movie that gave me inspiration to make "Buongiorno Italia" (Mille Soya) as a road movie. The fact the film was shot in many countries inspired me to write "Mille..." journey through many countries as well. Since the day I watched "UEOTW" by Wenders, I re-fell in love with Australia. Just like the time I watched Mad Max 2 the "Road Warrior". The soundtrack really blew me.

One of my favourite songs of the album was "Death Song" by Depeche Mode. I told Martin Gore of "DepechieMode" in 93 on our way to "Tunnel" Club, that I love their song from "Untill The End Of the World". He told me the story how they came to do it. He said, that day in the middle of the day his phone rang and when he answered the phone the voice on the other side said "Hello I am Wim Wenders, I am a filmmaker and I really would like you to do a song for my movie".

Martin has said, sorry they are too busy and they can do anything. Wenders has insisted on them doing a song and finally they could not believe and he got them to do the song for him. I told Martin that it is my favourite song of the band. Wim Wenders influenced me a lot to carry songs through the film. I did so in Mille, just like his, Far Away So Close, Until the End..., and Million Dollar Hotel. Until The End of the World is an odyssey for the modern age.

As with Homer's Odyssey, the purpose of the journey is to restore sight - a spiritual reconciliation between an obsessed father and a deserted son. Dr. Farber, in trying to find a cure for his wife's blindness, has created a device that allows the user to send images directly to the brain, enabling the blind to see.

The creation and operation of such a machine is in stark contrast to a deteriorating global situation, where the continued existence of mankind is under threat from a nuclear powered satellite that is falling towards earth.

Like many films directed by Wim Wenders, "Until the End of the World" (1991) is all about vision, desire and movement. It is also consistent with Wenders' tendency to have characters deal with each other indirectly, through pictures, phone messages, notes and intermediaries. It contains the visual and narrative restlessness of the German filmmaker's films, but in a new departure for Wenders, "Until the End of the World" privileges narrative over visual elements, even suggesting that only stories can cure "the disease of images" that ravages postmodern culture.

The futuristic mise-en-scene of "Until the End of the World", in which advanced computer technology is foregrounded, situates the film generically as science fiction.

Technology is simultaneously central to the end of the world scenario, used to produce hypnotically beautiful dream images, crucial to forming and maintaining human relationships and responsible for the devastation and transformation of those relationships. This reading of the film will focus on the complex and contradictory use of advanced technology as central plot device and theme.

The immediate threat of nuclear annihilation underlies the film's chase-conspiracy-romance plot which takes place across ten different countries. A massively ambitious project for Wenders, "Until the End of the World" is an Australian-German-French coproduction with an international cast. Multinational corporations like Sony and Sharp contributed the high definition video dream sequences that are foregrounded in the last third of the film, when it becomes a slower paced meditation on universal human experiences including dreams, memory, sorrow and death.

The "end of the world" scenario is significant because it is the backdrop against which the actions of the characters occurs and is interpreted. It signifies the destructive power of the technology we have created which may ultimately overwhelm us. Until the End of the World simultaneously embraces technology and rejects it, a contradiction that can be said to replicate larger cultural concerns.

"Until the End of the World" (UTEOTW) shows both the beneficial and destructive capabilities of technology. It ultimately privileges the centrality of human relationships which are nonetheless inseparable from their technological context. In addition, the film plays on the idea of romance that can last for all time, or "until the end of the world." This promise of timeless romance between individuals is not kept, but human relationships do endure, sometimes through technological means.

On one level, the film is embedded in postmodern culture: the main characters ignore the world crisis in their pursuit of individual goals, humans are alienated from each other and their environs frequently through technological means (their individual cars and computer systems, for example), there is a loss of diverse human experience in an increasingly global culture, and paranoia reigns supreme (everyone is suspicious of the motivations of others, often with good cause).

The "disease of images" experienced by Claire and Sam suggests the power and potential danger of mediated visual communication in western culture. Each of the characters afflicted with the disease of images must seek spiritual cures.

I think this really reflects on the technological ground breaking events taking place in the early 90's. Since the film was made in 1991 and that was the time the films it self were embracing digital technology.

I remember sound of the film were becoming digital standards such as DTS, or Dolby Digital, and in 1994 the world went on with the world wide web changing the whole concept of communication and information technology for mankind. Films that came out at that time which was of a wave length of a cyber world and post modern was UTEOTW.

The film also offers an essentially positive representation of human agency. Although involved in various nefarious activities, the characters are basically generous in spirit. Eventually, all of the main characters, who represent several nations and cultures, come together in Australia to celebrate the beginning of the new century together. The film suggests that humans can adapt and retain their humanity in a rapidly changing world. Thus the interaction with, and resistance to, technology forms an important part of the film's discourse.

Quite a bit of scientific sounding exposition is provided to explain how the process of recording dream images works, but finally the viewer, like the characters, gets lost in the images themselves, which stay on the screen for long moments, mesmerizingly obscure, then fleetingly clear, very much like dreams.

Generated on HDTV equipment, they are ephemeral and often painful visions of childhood, separation and loss. The impressionistic dream sequences are among the most beautiful in the film but are also the most dangerous to the characters, who must be rescued from "drowning in their own nocturnal imagery." Initially Claire attempts to resist their hypnotic power but this effort is feeble and short-lived.

UTEOTW recapitulates the road movie, questions the possibility of romantic renewal and interrogates technology. A technological product itself, the film simultaneously embraces technology and warns of its dangers. Its attempt to mediate these contradictory impulses are not completely successful. Like other Wenders' films, UTEOTW ends with a continuation of the journey, a rootlessness depicted in the final shots of Claire orbiting the Earth.

Before I close my article I like to remind that the soundtrack of UTEOTW is fantastic featuring Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Lou Reed, U2, Can and many others. As always Wenders really know how to incorporate music with films. I was inspired by Wim Wenders movies to bring in sound tracks to my Mille Soya and the other works.