Or more specifically, the state of the art. Wim Wenders's exercise in self-analysis is, firstly, a rumination on the importance of story. On the one hand: "Stories only exist in stories, whereas life goes by without the need to turn into stories." But: "Life without stories -- it isn't worth living." And: "Without a story you're dead. You can't make a movie without a story. You ever try to build a house without walls?" By design, the central situation here -- of a film crew marooned in Portugal without sufficient funds -- splinters into desultory moments around the becalmed production site, and the movie seems to want to see how far it can go -- like life -- without the "need" to turn into a story. It abstains very well for three-quarters of its two hours, when the locale switches to Los Angeles. Not so well thereafter, perhaps -- although the last scene, which offers a very firm End to a slack Middle and a nebulous Beginning, is a lapse of something other than willpower. General tone, however, counts for more here than plot, and the tone never falters until that End. Nothing is overworked, nothing overweighted. Visual tone counts for a lot, too. And in addition to Wenders's well-known eye (there may be no trick to making Portugal look so exotic, but it is quite something to do the same with a Los Angeles parking lot or drive-in restaurant), the movie boasts, also, the exquisite black-and-white photography of the venerable Henri Alekan, weighted a bit toward the lighter end of the gray scale. Around this point there emerges a secondary rumination, perhaps more pressing even than the story issue, on the relative merits of black-and-white versus color. "Life is in color, but black-and-white is more realistic," etc., etc. With Patrick Bauchau, Allen Goorwitz, Sam Fuller, and Viva. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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