Wenders’ films are indeed like old friends. They seem to fit the viewer’s hand like a glove. The enigmatic tone, the waspish humour, the flirtation with melodrama, the pseudo thriller tone. People will die, hearts will be broken, but life will go on. HIs choice of actors seems to reflect this: figures who seem almost too knowing for their roles: Harry Dean Stanton, Rüdiger Vogler, Kôji Yakusho. And here, again, Bruno Ganz, whose sympathetic features and tendency to smile wryly seem to speak to a world beyond the screen the film is set in, a life lived by his character with pleasures and sufferings we will never know. Wenders is neither slave to narrative nor afraid of it. His films contain stories that hold them together, but he seems more interested in the detail: the angle of the frame that Ganz’s character, a picture framer, is holding, or the tilt of Hopper’s hat, or the worry on the face of Lisa Kreuzer, rewarded by one of the film’s rare close-ups. Yet, this concern for the image is never permitted to become self-indulgent, and the pace is maintained by the zesty edit of Peter Przygodda.
It would be interesting to speculate on what inspired the director to tackle this story. If anything, the juxtaposition of the raddled cityscape of New York, contrasted with the high industrial orange hues of Hamburg and its port, might be the film’s most arresting element. That and the chance to juxtapose the broad tones of Hopper’s acting with understatement of Ganz. At the very end, Ganz appears to gain a kind of revenge via his melodramatic death, outdoing Hopper’s baroque beachside barbecue. These tonal contrasts fire the film, they give it an edge that transcends what might otherwise have been a generic mafia tale.
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