Over the past decade and a half, Wim Wenders has been responsible for one of the most peculiar filmographies ever assembled by a big name director. While Until the End of the World will always have its passionate defenders (including a few of us here at the Screengrab), it’s harder to make a case for such white elephants as The End of Violence and The Million Dollar Hotel. The director’s 2005 attempt at recapturing the spirit of Paris, Texas by teaming up again with screenwriter Sam Shepard for Don’t Come Knocking resulted in yet another moody, cryptic and meandering melodrama stuffed with oddball characters and dazzling visuals but short on narrative sense or recognizable human behavior.
Is there a quick fix that might set Wenders back on the path of relevance? This article in The Independent makes the case that getting the hell out of America might be a good start. It’s true that the U.S. has been the setting for some of Wenders’ least compelling work of late (the short jaunt to Cuba for 1999’s Buena Vista Social Club sure seemed to work wonders), and the director seems to have taken the hint with his new work-in-progress The Palermo Shooting, a “romantic thriller about a photographer that bounces between Germany and Sicily” that reunites Wenders with retirement-fund hawker Dennis Hopper. Still, it may not be fair to blame America for his follies; as the Independent piece hints, it might be about time for him to lose Bono’s phone number, too.