Wim Wender's Domain
Dateline: 07/17/00
Earlier this year, the great German director Wim Wenders premiered a new film The Million Dollar Hotel at the Berlin International Film Festival.. The story centers around a gang of unique outcasts and misfits live in a downtown Los Angeles flea-pit, known locally as the "Million Dollar Hotel."
The
screenplay for Million Dollar Hotel was written by Bono of U2, a frequent
contributor to the soundtracks of Wender's films. The cast contains an interesting
mix of acclaimed thespians: starring British Jeremy Davies, American box office
icon (though still Australian) Mel Gibson, the anorexic looking model and Eastern
European actress Milla Jovanovich, the convincingly strung-out Amanda Plummer,
the very English Julian Sands, popular TV actor Jimmie Smits, and Harold
and Maud's Bud Cort.
Since the premiere, the film has been released all over the world. You can currently see Million Dollar Hotel in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Brazil, Iceland, Portugal, Cypris, Hong Kong, Denmark and Norway. In America? America, unfortunately, does not have much interest in films made by foreign filmmakers. The film does not yet have a distributor in the states.
America seems to have an uneasy relationship with Wenders. I have yet to understand the decision to remake Wender's 1987 masterpiece Wings of Desire. A complex and brooding film about a pair of angels watching over the population of Berlin before the wall came down was transformed into a simplistic story about an angel who falls in love with Meg Ryan, heart surgeon. Why did they do that? Last year, however, his documentary, The Buena Vista Social Club was both a critical and commercial success.
The Web Site
If you are interested in understanding the breadth of this director's contribution
to film, I recommend you visit the new, official web site of Wim
Wenders. The domain offers biography information, photos, information on
each of the director's films (including shorts) and work in other disciplines,
an e-commerce area to purchase books about the filmmaker, a music section, and
message board for conversations among site visitors.
Wenders has produced more than twenty feature lengths films and documentaries in the last thirty years. The films span the globe, shot on numerous continents and featuring international casts. A classic example would be Until the End of the World, which slips in and out of French, German, and English. The first half of the film is a science-fiction road trip; part two is an apopolyptical film set in aboriginal Australia.
Other lesser known Wenders films to rent: Alice in the City (1983) and Paris, Texas (1984). Alice in the City, shot in black and white, begins in the American South. It tells the simple story of a young German filmmaker who is trying to make sense of his life. Upon his return to Germany, he is given a young girl to baby-sit, and when the mother doesn't return to collect the girl, he sets out to bring her home. Paris, Texas is another small, quiet film about people trying to make sense of their lives. Harry Dean Stanton plays a wandering man, who returns home after five years to find his lost wife and son. The soundtrack for that film, by Ry Cooder, is mesmerizing.
This does not even touch upon Wender's artistic output. There are also his short films, the photo exhibitions, the multimedia. Visit the web site and you will be awed by the amount of work one person can do. And let's hope Million Dollar Hotel finds releases in America soon.
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