what a sensuous pleasure watching this film. the colours in this thing are unreal. also, because the film has so many random characters in different locations, it relies heavily on carefully-orchestrated production. i really enjoyed watching this, seeing the points of suture that the editing covers, and thinking about wim wenders as a technical director.
the story here is quite weak. everything about it is transparently fake. main guy has a terminal “blood illness” that motivates him to follow the plot? sure. his family is SO fucking fake, with the utter non-character of his wife and kid. it’s clear that these are just backstory, necessary to create the illusion of a world or whatever—but i just wish that the film leaned in a bit into the absurdity of its plot contrivances, as well as its narrative blindspots, rather than trying to maintain some illusion of “reality.”
another thing i realized while watching this: in pretty much all european films from this period, there are shots of cityscapes, construction, cranes, skyscrapers, etc etc. godard will use the sounds of modernity, antonioni, fassbinder, blahblahblah. i always wondered about it, trying to find some parallel between the images of building and finance and urbanism, and the narratives of the modern new wave. i realized that, whatever direct parallels you might find—this film takes place in post-war germany, there is a strong presence of SPD graffiti, so all the cities and cranes do take on a literal meaning—but more importantly, i think that is just what was happening in the cities of the time, and the filmmakers were just recording what was happening around them. a document of a passed time; a bit of “visual culture,” if you will.