UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1995 Shane R. Burridge
(1991) 179 min IIIII
Wim Wenders must have considered this his dream film (literally, as the story turns out). His earler road movies (ALICE IN THE CITIES; KINGS OF THE ROAD; PARIS, TEXAS) and preoccupation with transient, questing characters finally comes to a head with UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, a road movie that travels all over the planet, no less.
The year is 1999, "the year the Indian satellite went out of control", so we are told, and Claire (Solveig Dommartin), a freewilled young woman, is given the opportunity of a lifetime when she lucks into a cache of stolen money. At almost the same time she meets an enigmatic stranger (William Hurt) who steals a small amount of her find, and so begins their global game of hide-and-seek, as Claire uses the rest of her money to chase him from continent to continent. This chase, which drags in others (not the least of whom is Sam Neill, Claire's former lover), seems to be the thrust of the film until about halfway through when it abruptly stops in Australia (the end of the world?), changes gear, and introduces a secondary cast and a new story. Suddenly Dommartin, Hurt, Neill, and others are involved with Max Von Sydow's (Hurt's father) experiments to digitally reconstruct images from the neo-cortex.
Opinions will be divided among many over which half of the film is better--or at least more enjoyable--but for some UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD will be just too much: too long, too big and too slow. At the outset, the material looks tailor-made for a whimsical fantasy (who wouldn't like to chase someone clear across the globe?) but Wenders has a curiously practical approach. It's hard also to get a handle on Dommartin's character. Her motivation for hunting down Hurt is unclear--is it obsession? Romance? The thrill of the chase? Or does she look upon her actions as the last expression of freedom and spontaneity (her character is established as capricious right from the start) beneath the decaying orbit of the satellite that hangs above her head like a Damocletian sword? Whatever the reason, she and Hurt do not make a terribly convincing couple--but then again, perhaps they are never meant to be. Like the others in the cast, Hurt and Dommartin are almost swamped by the scale of events Wenders places them in. State of the art technology (as it would be in 1999) is in every scene, and an impressive soundtrack of original songs, specially commissioned by Wenders, plays constantly throughout the first half of the film.
It almost seems like Wenders' grand game, but we can enjoy watching him shuffle the pieces because he never loses sight of the humanity of the characters--witness the poignant scene in which Hurt interviews his sister and her daughter. And a final shot, capturing the meditative wonder in Claire's face, is truly special, causing one to reappraise the title of the film. It's not a film to get serious about and find fault with--you'd rather just let Wenders indulge himself and take you along for the ride. Naturally, with scale as large as this, UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD is best enjoyed on a big screen--the video version suffers badly, not only in picture but also in content, with half an hour pruned out of it. See it in a cinema with a good sound system, if you can.
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