2005: Don't Come Knocking

Don't Come Knocking (Wenders, 2005) 5/10

Existential angst and Wim Wenders are synonymous with one another. From Alice In The Cities through to Wings of Desire and beyond, the former darling of the German Neue Welle has cultivated a visual lexicon of aesthetic beauty, frayed interpersonal relationships and concerns regarding the nature of modernity. His most recent project, the modern western Don't Come Knocking is another examination of the alien nature of contemporary society.

The film, Wenders' second collaboration with actor and playwright Sam Shepard, follows many of the previous themes the pair examined in the Wenders directed-Shepherd scripted Paris, Texas: the combustability of family, the isolating qualities of modernity, the intrapersonal need for reconciliation and the desire to find one's "home." Glossed in abstraction and reflective meditation, Paris, Texas became a cult classic thanks to Wenders' sparse direction and Harry Dean Stanton's taciturn lead performance. Unfortunately, the laconic sparseness and low-key performance, which defined Paris, Texas is displaced in favour of implausible scenarios, dubious acting and an imbecilic script.

Don't Come Knocking focuses on Howard (Sam Shepard) an aging star of film westerns, who abruptly leaves the set of his latest film in order to find himself. Arriving in Nevada, Howard reunites with his mother (Eva Marie Saint) after a three decade long absence. At his estranged mother's home, Howard learns he impregnated a waitress (Jessica Lange) while shooting in Butte, Montana twenty years earlier and thus goes on a search to find his long-lost family; encountering a collection of characters along the way including his angry, misogynistic son Earl(Gabriel Mann), a mysterious woman named Skye (Sarah Polley) and the studio's insurance agent (Tim Roth).

In an attempt to foster genuine relationships, the childike Howard jettisons his life of loose women, drugs and booze in search of something deeper. Yet, he is incapable of participating in permanent and concrete relationships. Meandering through life in a haze, Howard has failed to allow others into his life; yet childishly excepts others to allow him to reimmerse in to their life instanteously. Even his own mother only knows him from negative tabloid clippings. Despite his status as a hero of westerns, his lifestyle is better equipped to the neon environment of casinos, than the quiet platitudes of Butte, Montana.

The codes of the Old West and humble masculinity he represents on screen are lacking within his hedonistic approach to life; therefore rendering genuine interaction to be impossible. Like Harry Dean Stanton's Travis in Paris, Texas, Howard is unable to connect to the society he strives to immerse himself in. Yet unlike Travis, Howard is not a man disaffected by the glamour of modernity, but rather is a product of contemporary society's failure to build meaningful relationships. He requires modern vices to substitute for his limited emotional capacity.

Additionally, like in Paris, Texas the central characters are engaged in a personal search for applicable truths and familiarities. After the death of her mother, Sarah Polley's ambigious Skye journeys to her mother's native Butte in order to find meaning and purpose; Howard travels to Butte to find his family; while Howard's angry son looks inward to accept his estranged parent.

Wim Wenders' cinema is one centered upon the power of the moving image and thus it is no surprise that Don't Come Knocking is aesthetically stunning. Cinematographer Franz Lustig's Edward Hopper inspired photography is filled with bright colours and images inspired by the iconic American painter. Through Lustig's widescreen lens, the pictureseque detail of Butte, Montana is brought to life in colourful detail. But while previous Wenders' projects allow the respective film's visual language to advance the plot and describe the feelings of specific characters, Don't Come Knocking overindulges in Shepard's incoherent scripted ramblings: meandering in a sea of sedate ideas and choppy dialogue.

In recent films such as Million Dollar Hotel, Wenders has worked closely with friends such as U2's Bono with mixed results. Don't Come Knocking is no exception. One could argue that Wenders familiarity with collaborators such as Shepard and the playwright's partner Jessica Lange has resulted in the director's failure to criticize his friend's work. From the film's opening moments, Don't Come Knocking is propelled by a stream of improbable storylines.

The first of which focuses around Howard's status as a washed-up star of Westerns since the early '70's: a genre whose rapid decline began in the late 60's in favour of aggressive neo-police procedurals such as The French Connection and Dirty Harry . Secondly, the reunion between Eva Marie Saint is highly implausible as she re-accepts her prodigal son as though he has been gone no more than three minutes, let alone three decades. Thirdly, the interactions and dialogue between characters often defy logic in their absurdity such as the scenario in which Earl tosses his oversized furniture from a miniscule second-storey window onto the streets of Butte: failing to stir the seemingly non-existent residents of Butte in the process.

The impractical nature of Shepard's narrative results in a jarring and awkward storyline, which undermines the unsentimental realism Wenders strives for in this ill-focused film. The wandering focus of Wenders narrative and the elusive intentions of Shepard's script permeates the film's incoherent performances: Shepard's half-baked aggression and sense of loss feels contrived; Lange's waitress drifts from anger to ditzy eccentricity; Mann's over-the-top performance belongs in a high school production; even poor Eva Marie Saint comes across as a discordant Alzheimer's patient.

Only in the film's low-key performances from Roth as a slimy insurance agent and Polley's brilliant effort as an enigmatic woman does the film tap into the reservoir of talent at its disposal, which also includes a cameo from screen legend George Kennedy as Howard's embittered director and Fairuza Balk as Earl's girlfriend. In this restrained format Wenders excels; as evident in the film's noticeably excellent final thirty minutes. But these rare scenes of emotional fervor such as Lange's brutal rebuttal to Howard's romantic advances outside a health club are often wasted in favour of unnecessary directorial flourishes: such as the exaggerated encircling of Howard as he spends an entire day contemplating his past on Earl's weatherworn couch.

With its muddled intentions and mismanaged sensibilites, Don't Come Knocking is a tragic misappropriation of talent. Given its stellar cast and vibrant cinematography, there is potential for an existential critique of selfish ambitions, family and traditional values within Wenders framework. Instead the film becomes an ill-defined paean to the art of Edward Hopper and to the American West in locations such as Moab and Butte. The film lacks focus and consistency. There are too many dire performances from well-established actors and elements within the mis-en-scene which are routinely squandered in a visually fascinating mess.

* Don't Come Knocking is released by Sony Home Video

Other Wim Wenders Films Reviewed:
Paris, Texas (1983) 9/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1983: Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1983) 9/10

With it’s opening aerial shots of the Mojave Desert, one would first expect Wim Wenders’ 1983 "road movie" Paris, Texas to be an elegiac homage to the American Western. Yet, out of the scorching landscape of the Mojave Desert there stumbles a man who is not a robust giant, but rather a skeletal figure: a mere shadow of his former self. Like John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers, the man is a loner: out of touch with the modern world, yet trying to re-enter it without fully being able to comprehend the effect of such a decision.

Thus, we are witness to the first endeavor in four years undertaken by Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) to exit the wind-swept vast emptiness of the desert and re-enter the neon wilderness of contemporary American society. Desperate to quench his thirst, Travis collapses in a diminutive concrete bar on the outskirts of the Mojave and awakens only to find himself being scrutinized by an inquisitive German physician and his stringent green neon lights. Searching for the man’s identity, the physician comes across a business card in Travis’ wallet. Yet, Travis is unable to confirm whether the name on the card belongs to him, or a relative. He is currently in a self-imposed catatonic mute state: the result of a tragedy he is as of yet is unwilling to confer about.

After calling the number, the physician gets in contact with Travis’ brother Walt (Dean Stockwell): a Los Angeles based entrepreneur who designs billboards and lives in a modern home on the periphery of metropolitan LA. Stunned to hear of his brother’s existence Walt informs his French wife Anne (Aurore Clement) about the news. Her response is aphasic. While she is pleased to hear that her brother-in-law is alive, she is internally worried about the effect it will have on his soon to be 8 year old son Hunter (Hunter Carson) who she and her husband have adopted.

Upon arriving in Texas, Walt is appalled to find that his brother has snuck away from the physician’s office in order to continue his eternal search in the desert. When Walt catches up with Travis, he is given a cold response. Despite Walt’s efforts to re-immerse him into the fold, Travis eventually steals away again in his vain quest to return to the wilderness. Yet, once more Walt corrals his estranged brother and demands an answer to Travis’ behaviour. However like the static and muted television in their motel room, Walt receives nothing but silence and disorientation.

Travis continues to receive information, but fails to process the answers Walt needs and wants to hear. Soon, Travis’ perplexing behaviour turns obsessive-compulsive as he refuses to fly to LA and instead wants Walt to track down a particular rental car and take a two day trip back to southern California. Reluctantly, Walt agrees. Along the way, Travis begins to slowly open up. His character is a shy and childlike ball of turbulence. His internal conflicts produce a web of confused language and bizarre questions about his childhood.

In fact, as the film expands so does Travis’ interest in the past. Upon arriving at Walter’s home, he voraciously flips through photo albums and asks questions about his mother. Most befuddling of all he carries a picture of an empty plot of desert in Paris, Texas, which he purchased four years earlier to begin a new life for his family. According to a story told to Travis by his father, it was the land were Travis was initially conceived. While Walter believes his brother has fried his mind in the Mojave sun; in actuality Travis has begun a process of regeneration and rebirth; reverting to a childlike state and learning how to grow.

Upon his first distant meetings with his remote son, Travis appears appropriately nervous: preferring to spend time sitting on Walter’s hill-top patio with a pair of binoculars staring at the planes who fly over the house constantly throughout the day. The desert hills have been replaced with tight concrete monstrosities; while the whistling wind is usurped by a cacophony of whizzing planes, cars and sirens. Artificial lights pollute the sky in a blaze of simulated nature. Travis is perturbed by it all. He is desperately searching to return to something more organic and natural.

As he reaches a more mature stage of growth, he asks Walter’s housekeeper to help him become an ideal father. His son who previously rejected all advances to walk home with his father, now clings to his side, which worries Anne and Walt. The past becomes more resonant when Walter displays Super 8 footage from five years earlier in which Travis, Hunter and his abstracted wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) are blissfully enjoying life. The images unearth and solder the directionless fragments in Travis’ mind. Now, he has a purpose. After being informed by Anne that Jane is possibly residing in Houston, Travis gathers his son and belongs and attempts to recover the life he once he lost and mend the past once and for all.

Paris, Texas is less a "road movie" as some critics have described it and more an existential journey for self-knowledge, as well as a commentary on the emotional complexities of modern life. Travis is desperate to rehabilitate the family he once had and realizes he must undergo his own personal psychological and emotional amendment in order to do so. This involves facing the past and regenerating himself from a childlike state to an effective father. The process is made incredibly difficult not only because of the external difficulties between father and son, but also because of Travis’ reluctant and unassertive approach to solving problems.

When Travis’ is finally reunited with Jane his response is frigid and aggressive. He detests what she has become, but more so he detests what he has forced her to become due to his past actions. Wender’s lush long takes and the performances by Stanton and Kinski during these scenes are beautiful, yet difficult. Like Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, Wenders traps his audience by exercising the scenes between the estranged couple in gorgeous extended takes that demonstrate the multiple sides to the couple. Upon their first meeting Travis listens while Jane talks in a meaningless, watery tone. Yet, the tables are later turned with Jane tearfully listening, while Travis concocts a painful allegory in a striking contrast to Jane’s destitute speech. It is here that we see Travis realize the folly of his four years of pain and strife.

Earlier, Travis had drunkenly told Hunter about how his father began to love his mother not for who she was as a person, but as an idea. This scene is shot in a manner that almost appears like a psychologist’s office in which Travis pours out his troubles to his son who becomes his stand-in psychoanalyst. Yet, here we begin to see how the past continues to inflict great pain on Travis. Whereas at the beginning of the film, he remained a teetotal former alcoholic, he now readily drowns himself in alcohol to try to forget the past. As he drives his antiquated truck through decrepit towns with faded Coca-Cola signs and dim-lit bars, he knows he must accomplish this task in order to bring stability and meaning to the life of his son, if not to his own.

Robby Muller’s cinematography is truly gorgeous and along with Kaufman’s Unbearable Lightness of Being and Kurosawa’s Ran, Paris Texas is one of the best looking films of the decade. It is also enhanced by Wenders colour-coded symbolism that unlike the work in PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love never feels forced or artificial, but rather an organic extension of the work. In my analysis, the four major colours referenced the most overtly in the picture are black, red, green and yellow. Black stands in for truth and honesty. The couch on which Travis emits his darkest secrets to his son is black, as is the clothing he wears on his second visit with Jane.

Red stands for the past and pain. The dusty red cap Travis wears in the desert symbolizes his mental agony. The crane assisting in the delicate construction of claustrophobic, emotionless new buildings is red. Upon their first sighting of Jane, father and son are wearing red, while she drives a red Chevette. The room in which Travis and Jane first talk is completely red as is her clothing. Yellow stands for change. The cap wore by Dean Stockwell when he first learns that Travis is alive is yellow. The shirt wore by Hunter when he first accepts Travis is yellow. Green seems to be the most promising colour that of hope. The second to last scene in the film is bathed in green as is Travis’ meeting with the physician. Here there is promise for something new to be created and/or rehabilitated.

The modern problems of communication are also symbolized in the film. Travis is reluctant to use modern appliances such as phones, cars, planes or trains. His attempts to be honest and forthcoming often necessitate in turning his back to the person he is trying to address. At the beginning of the film, he is often mute or talks in ambigious fragments, which fail to capture his emotions to others. Furthermore, he is unable to sleep as he is tormented by an urge to end his search.

Brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, powerfully scripted by Sam Shepard and astutely directed Wim Wenders film is a slow-burning exploration into the psychological and emotional difficulties in contemporary Western society. Despite its slow pace, the film is never dull or trite. Rather the picture is a fascinating and complex, yet emotionally difficult examination of a man destroyed by modernity and searching to rebuild the past in order to better the future of his once cherished family.

Like L’Avventura and La Dolce Vita, the film successfully examines the spiritual emptiness of modern life. Travis is a figure desperate to love, yet has realized the life he has sought for almost half a decade was nothing more than an idealized memory. His wife and their relationship have become objectified, sterile and passive. Thus, like Ethan Edwards the home Travis returns to can no longer accept his kind. The road and the desert are his only salvation: the only environment in which the remainder of his desolate life can continue.

* Paris, Texas is available on R1 DVD through Fox Home Video

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.