Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3

KINGS OF THE ROAD (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3            A            
Germany  (175 mi)  1976  d:  Wim Wenders

It has something to do with being born in post-war Germany in a land that tried to forget about its own history, tried to forget about its own myths, that tried to adapt to anything, especially American culture.          —Wim Wenders

One of Wenders’ best, clever, existentialist, and amusingly insightful on several different levels, perhaps the only film ever seen where a Volkswagen Bug is driven like a sports car, where it accelerates out of the blocks, screeches around turns, and opens up on the straightaways, blindly flying through intersections at full speed with no regard apparently for the consequences, where the driver (Hanns Zischler) becomes known, affectionately enough, as Kamikaze.  In a memorable opening sequence, he unintentionally hooks up with fellow road traveler Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler), looking a bit like the director himself with that shaggy dog look, who is parked along the side of the road in his live-in moving and storage truck, noted for an illuminated Michelin man doll next to the big lettered emblem above the front windshield, “UMZUGE,” apparently a German reference for a moving van.  Not just a road movie, but more an anthem to road movies, as the three-hour length only accentuates the passing of time, becoming a prominent theme, where the relaxed and leisurely pace never wavers, where the road music is expressed by recurring guitar motifs by Alex Linstädt that couldn’t be more warmly welcoming and upbeat.  Shot along the border regions between East and West Germany, which is listed in the opening credits, along with the correct aspect ratio, of all things, this is a mesmerizing road movie shot in Black and White by Robbie Müller and Martin Schäfer, a film that reaches under the surface to reveal a great deal about the changing face of cinema and Germany’s divided history.  There are plenty of American references as well, mostly in the prevalent use of rock ‘n’ roll music, including English lyrics that they can’t get out of their heads, where at one point the characters remark that “the Yanks have colonized our subconscious.”

This could be seen as a German version of Easy Rider (1969), one where the photographic landscapes often dominate the central characters, where the focus may shift to merging trains with the road, or filming reflections off the truck’s windowshield or side view mirrors, all fleeting images of transience.  Clearly a generational movie, one that identifies with the post 60’s cultural changes and the yearning for individualism and freedom, Wenders brilliantly interweaves into the storyline the lives of several elderly people whose pasts shadow the present, often in haunting yet illuminating ways.  Sleeping on the side of the road in his truck, Bruno roams the country roads as a traveling projectionist, repairing old broken down movie projectors, bringing them back to life, at least temporarily, in the small towns with a sole family run theater that is barely surviving due to the commercial influence of American films in the bigger cities, effectively shutting down the German market and the small town picture shows.  One elderly gentleman, a former Nazi party member who ran a theater back in the silent era, explains he had to petition the government after the war to get his ownership re-instated, explaining there were many who were forced to do the same, wondering what good it did any of them as nobody comes to their theaters anymore.  Bruno and Kamikaze, both estranged from their parents, hit the road together as resourceful, free spirited, and independent minded men who face their responsibilities and the future with a casual air of disregard, instead leaning more towards living in the moment.  Wenders’ brilliance in this film is capturing in detail so many of those moments as they unravel in real time.  Like JULES AND JIM (1962), which (referring to the novel upon which it was based) Truffaut called “a perfect hymn to love, perhaps even a hymn to life,” this film is also a celebration of camaraderie and friendship, but this is post French New Wave, where the joyful energy and exuberance has dimmed and both men are more about living and getting on in their lives with some degree of personal satisfaction.  

One of the most beautiful sequences involves a theater partially filled with grade school children impatiently waiting for the movie to start, where the time for repairs only makes the kids more tired and restless, until in a stroke of mad genius, Kamikaze turns on a theater light behind the movie screen, where the two are silhouetted like moving puppets, carrying on a charade of physical comedy and farce which changes the expression on the kid’s faces to utter amazement, as if they’re literally witnessing magic for the first time.  In another extended sequence, Bruno meets a bored theater cashier, Lisa Kreuzer, flirting with her openly, eventually forced into service as the projectionist didn’t have a clue what they were doing.  This is the closest he comes to developing a rapport with the opposite sex, where they end up spending the night in a cramped room above the theater, but not as you might expect, as they’re friendly enough, but they can never find the words to get started, leaving each as devastatingly empty afterwards as the theater itself.  Something should be said however for the growing relationship of the two men, so much of which is unspoken, as they are never actually friends, meeting by chance, and neither ever makes any gut-wrenching confessional speeches to one another, but are merely traveling companions whose days run together as they share experiences, becoming familiar but from a safe distance.  Each man is forced to challenge their own personal comfort zone as perhaps they’re living too comfortably, always passing through the lives of others, but never stopping to take hold of real love or responsibility.  Both end up taking side trips to visit their surviving parents with surprisingly different results, where in both cases we see a gentle side of them that is vulnerable and exposed. 

Despite being an open road picture, much of what happens takes place in the cramped quarters of projection booths, the front seat or the tight sleeping quarters of the truck, a lone food outlet on the side of the road, an isolated gas station, or the empty confines of a movie theater, all places where they are either alone, peering through a protected booth, or more likely with one other person.  What this suggests is that much of our lives we are tucked out of reach from others, whether it’s family or friends, our memories, even our nation’s history, as we all deal with as much as we can seemingly alone.  The open road or freedom, when seen in this light, actually prevents close personal involvement with others, as we’re too busy leaving or making our escape.  The projection booths are filled with old movie posters of Brigitte Bardot or Fritz Lang, various pin-up girls, but also faces we have forgotten through the passage of time.  When an elderly woman speaks of her disinterest in the kinds of films being made today, suggesting the audience turns into dazed, stone faced robots, she is really reminiscing about the life and vitality of her era, much of which, due to the negative history of the Third Reich, the rest of the world has denounced or forgotten.  Nonetheless it remains an intense recollection that few other memories in her life can equal.   A disconnection to one’s life, or the past, the divisive nature of which becomes another theme of the film, culminating in an intriguing sequence at a dead end border crossing into East Germany, where they arrive at a vacated sentry station in the middle of the night.  The names of American cities are carved on the walls, where they may as well be a million miles from nowhere, and in a drunken confrontation, they amusingly discuss their vital need for women, which unfortunately comes at the cost of individual freedom.  In the bright light of the next morning, peering over into the vast unchartered territory of East Germany, the border is seen as an inhospitable and foreboding place, a combination of forbidden territory and a promised land on the other side. 

To Live and Die in LA

TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA           B+               

USA  (116 mi)  1985  d:  William Friedkin

Guess what, Uncle Sam don’t give a shit about your expenses. You want bread, fuck a baker.       —Richard Chance (William Peterson)

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was a Michael Mann film, a gritty portrait of Los Angeles filled with a stylistic flourish from the exquisite cinematography of Robby Müller with gorgeous shots of the city at sunrise and dusk illuminated by a sheen of smog and a 1980’s Wang Chung soundtrack that gives the film a pulsating edge.  Very much driven by a synthesized techno beat so prominently featured in FLASHDANCE (1983) and the Miami Vice TV series (1984 – 90), this is a hard hitting, adrenaline-laced cop drama where the cops straddle the same ethical line as the criminals, in fact they are mirror images of one another, oftentimes getting more caught up in the business than they’d prefer, usually driven by a manic personality that settles for nothing less than a full-out assault.  Using a cast of relative unknowns, featuring two prominent Chicago actors who got their start in local community theater, this was William Peterson’s first starring movie role while John Pankow, whose older brother plays in the rock band Chicago, had worked earlier in Miami Vice.  Both play FBI agents in the counterfeit division, Chance and Vukovich, where their boss is murdered when he gets too close to one operation, giving this a tone of revenge, where getting this guy becomes personal, using any means necessary to bring him down.  Willem Dafoe is excellent as the cold-blooded killer and counterfeiter Rick Masters, a complete professional who carries out his business with icy control, whose creepiness becomes more accentuated through his eerie calm.  He also has his hand in kinky sex and modern art, often blending the two, almost always with a gorgeous girl, Debra Feuer, who follows his every lead.   

Shot all on location in some of the seedier sections of town, Friedkin offers a cynically realistic approach to the film noir crime thriller, using a near documentary style, but the characters are all outcasts, outlaws beyond the reach of the law and cops who think they are above the law, both living on the margins, creating a feeling of detachment and alienation.  One of the most extraordinary scenes is watching Masters diligently working at his craft, printing counterfeit bills, step by step using his artistic skills with the meticulous precision of a Bach cantata, where his detailed professionalism is nothing less than impressive, offering a window to the audience into this highly skilled criminal enterprise.  It’s interesting that Friedkin reveals so clearly what Chance is up against, as this is Peterson’s film, where he dominates the action sequences and all the build up to them, as he’s a man on a mission, an adrenaline junkie who’s not afraid to bungee jump off a bridge with a rope tethered to his foot, swinging just above the water’s edge, creating a rush of energy that he needs to make him feel alive.  He also has a girl, Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel), an inmate out on parole working at a strip club where she hears things, where Chance uses her for sex and information, threatening to cut off her parole if she stops feeding him tips.  His moral character is questionable, as he’s like a cowboy with an itchy trigger finger, obsessed with tracking down his man, where he doesn’t care what methods are used to pull it off.  His partner Vukovich is more nervous about his full throttle, free-wheeling style, thinking it’s reckless and outside the bounds of department regulations, but it’s his partner, a guy you just don’t cross in police business, so he goes along with it, creating, in effect, a counterfeit persona.

The measure of an action thriller, of course, is the action, and this one features a doozy of a car chase, one precipitated by Chance’s dubious choice to carry out a robbery to raise the needed cash in an undercover sting operation that his own bureau won’t cover.  What seemed like a sure bet turns into a sprawling mess, where they literally kidnap a guy for the contents of his briefcase.  In perhaps the turning point in the film, they bring the guy to a freeway underpass to open the contents, but he hasn’t got the key, so in a fit of rage Chance repeatedly smashes the briefcase against the cement pylons only to discover they are taking rifle fire from the road above.  This event seems to activate his hair trigger, clicking the on switch, as the ensuing car chase ends up as a hair-raising ride through a crowded warehouse district before ending up on the freeway going the wrong way, creating a tremendous logjam, not to mention a stockpile of cars smashing into one another.  This is thrillingly photographed, slowly developing where initially you're not even aware it is a car chase before it kicks into high gear, where the action seems to symbolize Chance’s spiraling moral void, as the look into his eyes as he’s driving suggest the actions of a madman.  Just as they think they might have gotten away, Frieidkin yet again defies all expectations by continuing the heist gone wrong theme, where the ramifications are endless, all spinning out of control, where the audience is treated to a visceral experience that again opens a window into this kind of dangerous world, where Vukovich especially continually sees his career and his life passing before his eyes during the final third of the film.  This is a rare style of film in that it provides incidents of graphic nudity mixed with blunt trauma in such an entertaining style, which was highly unusual in its day.  The counterfeit theme is intriguing as well, blurring the lines of moral corruption between the police and the criminals, where the Los Angeles police are notorious for their rampant abuse and misconduct, where it’s impossible to tell with the human eye just which cops and what pedestrians walking down the street are free of criminal interests and associations.