WRONG MOVE (Falsche Bewegung) – made for TV, Road
Trilogy Pt. 2 B-
Germany (103 mi) 1975 d: Wim Wenders
Germany (103 mi) 1975 d: Wim Wenders
I would also like to
speak briefly about loneliness here in Germany. It appears to me to be more
hidden and at the same time more painful than elsewhere. The history of ideas
here could be responsible for this, with everybody searching for a way of
living in which the overcoming of fear would be possible. Preaching virtues
like courage, perseverance and industry was simply supposed to distract from fear.
At least let us assume that is how it is. Like nowhere else, philosophies could
be utilized as state philosophies, so that the necessarily criminal methods by
which fear was to be overcome could even be legalized. Fear here is taken for
vanity or ignominy. That is why loneliness in Germany is masked by all these
tell-tale lifeless faces which haunt supermarkets, recreational areas,
pedestrian zones, and fitness centers. The dead souls of Germany...
—The Industrialist (Ivan Desny)
In the second part of the director’s Road Movie Trilogy,
Wenders veers into unexplored territory, as it’s largely an out-of-time
experiment gone wrong, loosely based on an 18th century coming-of-age novel,
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s
Apprenticeship, set in contemporary times.
In the earlier era, leaving home and traveling was a means of acquiring
a wealth of experience that one could draw upon for inspiration and literary
expansion. Released in 1975, made for
television, the film won seven major prizes from the German Film Awards,
including Best Director and Best Screenplay, though it’s a film that resists
interpretation and is perhaps best known for its interesting use of Fassbinder
actors, while also notable for Nastassja Kinski’s marvelous movie debut at the
age of 13. Adapted by Peter Handke, an
Austrian novelist and playwright who collaborated earlier with Wenders on THE
GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1972) and later on Wings
of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987), there is a coolness of tone that
never wavers throughout, psychologically distant and audience unfriendly,
featuring an overly detached lead character Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler) who
readily acknowledges through an inner narration that he has a hatred and
distrust of his fellow people, a self-obsessed man incapable of pity, yet he
aspires to be a writer. Blinded by his
own shortcomings, he sets out on a journey to discover the truth, with mixed
results, as there’s some question whether he learns anything at all, and may
simply have taken a “wrong turn.” Filmed
in color, surprisingly, often at dusk, it must be said that this is a sad and
gloomy experience, though not without its comical moments, where this lonely
odyssey through the minefields of a contemporary post-war German landscape is
akin to a self-portrait of the artist and the nation that includes explorations
of autobiographical identity, resurrecting longstanding historical issues of
guilt, loss, anger, and confusion, where the question of self-worth is always
lingering close to the surface.
The film opens with an aerial shot over the town of
Glücksstadt in northern Germany near the mouth of the Elbe River, where we find
Wilhelm playing a Troggs album before putting his fist through the window,
indicative not only of pent-up frustration, but his inability to break through
his own alienation to become a successful writer, where we learn he hasn’t
spoken in several days, claiming he’s not desperate, just listless and fed up,
and that he’d like to be able to write “something essential.” Certainly one of his impediments is living at
home with his domineering mother, played by Marianne Hoppe, a German actress
from the 30’s, who not only packs his bags, choosing several books, but buys
him a train ticket to Bonn, the provincial Capital of Germany at the time,
claiming he needs to get out and explore the world. From out his window he sets his eyes upon
Hanna Schygulla, who just completed work on Fassbinder’s EFFI BRIEST (1974),
playing actress Therese Farner, who, after an exchanging glance, boards another
train, opening the window while continuing to smile at Wilhelm. Passing her phone number to him through the
conductor, Wilhelm gazes at her as the trains move parallel to one another, Falsche
Bewegung YouTube (1:23), a striking motif that also suggests a romanticized
notion of idealized love. Love stories
are not something we often get in Wenders’ films, and this is no exception,
where the time they spend together could perhaps better be described as the
absence of love, ultimately leading to outright revulsion and disgust. It’s also on the train where he first meets
Kinski as Mignon, playing a mute acrobat, juggler, and pickpocket, traveling
with her much older father calling himself Laertes (Hans Christian Blech), the
same name as Odysseus’s father, where metaphorically he may as well be the
father of the nation, having played a role in Nazi atrocities, causing his nose
to bleed whenever he remembers the horrors of the past. Laertes is also a Brechtian street peddler
and con artist, hustling meals and tickets on the train, begging money while
pretending to be blind, or passing the hat while his daughter performs. Mignon is a beautiful, strangely compelling
character that bears silent witness to the future, which remains continually
out of their grasp.
Like a gathering of the spirits, all the central characters
meet under one roof, having added to the illustrious assemblage an Austrian poet
Bernhard Landau (Peter Kern, who worked in four Fassbinder films), perhaps best
known for his bad poetry and personal philosophy, “I never amounted to much and
hope to stay that way,” who suggests they can all stay at the country estate of
his capitalist uncle, but then leads them into the home of a complete stranger,
Ivan Desny as the Industrialist, a role he revisits in THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA
BRAUN (1979), who strangely welcomes them into his home, where their arrival
interrupts his suicide attempt. What
follows is a lengthy speech from the Industrialist suggesting loneliness in
Germany is more painful than elsewhere, more hidden, where they are seeking a
way of life to overcome their fears, something considered vain and shameful to
German citizens. “That’s why loneliness
in Germany is masked by all those revealing soulless faces that haunt
supermarkets, recreational areas, pedestrian zones, and fitness centers. The dead souls of Germany.” One by one each of the visitors heads
upstairs to bed except Wilhelm, still listening intently, where the
Industrialist reveals afterwards, “It was very touching to see the way you
listened to me.” The next morning the
guests all amble up a slowly climbing hill overlooking the Rhine River, with
some moving ahead, others lagging behind, continually shifting positions,
including an examination of poetry and politics, placing it in context with the
nation’s recent past, where the sense of ascendancy has a casual nature about
it, yet at the same time they are seeking higher knowledge by engaging in these
philosophic discussions, where Wilhelm asserts “In writing, observation’s
better than inspiration,” while at the same time confessing he often misses
pertinent details that stand in full view right before him, where the path to
knowledge is often illusory. This theme
of hearing or not hearing, seeing but not seeing, plays a prominent role in
Wenders’ films where protagonists suffer from inadequate perception of the
world around them, often seen meandering, feeling alienated and lost, as the
characters are here, dead souls drifting through time, spewing out soliloquies,
speaking in philosophical abstractions, where the sense of disconnection to
culture and identity is acute.
Not for everyone, as this is easily Wenders’s most inertly
dour film, and his most talkative, where little happens, yet the audience is
bombarded by subtitles and various literary concepts, where the level of
bleakness has never been more pronounced, exacerbated by an almost total lack
of identification with the characters, instead getting lost in the contemporary
German landscape. Of particular note is
Robby Müller’s cinematography and Jürgen Knieper’s off-putting musical score,
where the repeated piano chords are reminiscent of the 5th Movement from
Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time,
which was written in 1941 and first performed in a Nazi concentration camp,
played here by Peter Serkin, piano and Ida Kavafian, violin, Louange à l' Immortalité de
Jésus - YouTube (8:11). Like In
a Year of 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden) (1978), Fassbinder at his
most despairing, Wenders similarly utilizes the city of Frankfurt, at the time
the nation’s financial center, where a scant outline could be seen at the time
of skyscrapers being built, where the city becomes, “by extension, about the
psychic immiseration of life in the soulless cities of modern corporate
capitalism.” (from Thomas Elsaesser, 1996, Fassbinder's
Germany: History, Identity, Subject).
This destination feels like a dead end, a place where aggressions grow
stronger and relationships die, becoming a study in colorless buildings and the
looming presence of high rises, as if always forced to live in the shadow of
existence. In the beginning, as the
train pulls out of his hometown, Wilhelm thinks of his mother, “I would
remember her better later in some other place.”
Similarly, his parting thoughts to Therese, “I know I shall love you
very much one day, Therese.” While it’s
clear Wilhelm has lost his way, the road to enlightenment in this film is a
meandering path of continuous soul-searching, reflecting the multiple attempts
to interact and find inspiration in human companionship, but discovering
instead an ambiguous world filled with sadly unfulfilled characters involved in
meaningless relationships ultimately defined by their aimlessness and overall
nihilistic tendencies, perhaps best expressed by the image of television sets
seen playing in the corner of rooms, but all you see is the flicker of constant
snow on the screen. “If only politics
and poetry could be united,” Wilhelm wonders at one point, to which Laertes
responds, “That would mean the end of longing, and the end of the world.” Wilhelm abandons his friends and heads for
the other side of the country, finally seen standing atop Zugspitze, the
tallest mountain in Germany, still waiting for some insight, like a Buddhist
revelation of enlightenment, but in the end, despite the poetic ruminations, he
has come to learn very little about himself.
Despite the intellectual pursuits, there’s not much that resembles an
actual road movie, instead feeling more like an existential journey through the
abyss.
