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'Don't Come Knocking' surprises, resonates

"Don't Come Knocking" is a wry, allegorical gem — a film that reunites German-born director Wim Wenders with writer Sam Shepard for the first time since the two created the groundbreaking, heartbreaking "Paris, Texas" in 1984. Like Wenders' best movies, "Don't Come Knocking" is literate, musical, a cinematic delight. And: It's not at all what you think it's going to be about.

Sony Pictures Classics 'Don't Come Knocking' 4 out of 5 stars Director: Wim Wenders Starring: Fairuza Balk, Eva Marie Saint, Mike Butters, Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange Run time: 110 minutes Release date: March 17, 2006 Rating: R for language and brief nudity. See showtimes Meet the director German-born director Wim Wenders discusses the lonesome wanderers who populate his films. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Don't Come Knocking'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Quick story line: Aging cowboy actor Howard Spence (Shepard) mounts his horse on a movie set in Utah and rides into the West — and keeps on riding, all the way to Nevada, eventually to Montana, leaving the producers in limbo. We learn soon enough that Howard is a misfit, arrogant, a man of great appetites and little conscience. The soul of the movie is about Howard's fleeting reconnection, after a 30-year absence, with the past that he has squandered. With a mother. With a lover. With a son. And maybe with a stranger.

"Don't Come Knocking" is not "Paris, Texas." Different story, different mood, different aim. Yet the director and the screenwriter wink at it throughout, employing familiar elements in entirely different contexts: The wandering protagonist. A stranger at the desert outpost. Scrapbooks and old pictures suggesting a lost past. Confronting pain and truth through one-way glass. Through T-Bone Burnett's score, Wenders and Shepard even wink at the music from "Paris, Texas" — Marc Ribot doing much of the tasty, jagged guitar work this time, instead of Ry Cooder.

In many ways, "Don't Come Knocking" is a photographic negative of "Paris, Texas." This wandering hero, for all his good-times jocularity, is not a sympathetic character. He's totally lacking a sense of accountability. So our affections fall, instead, to the principal characters who react to Howard — a man who, in so many ways, is the very symbol of a lost America. The cowboy actor likes to be seen, for sure, but he's not so keen on being examined. "Where is Howard, who is Howard? Where did he go?" sings one character in the film. "You can lie to yourself, Howard," screams another. "Just don't lie to me."

Wenders likes to think of this film as farcical, whereas "Paris, Texas" took us more deeply into the shadows of tragedy and sorrow. And yet: "Don't Come Knocking" has its own searing, sad moments — as well as a magnificent cinematic climax (involving the ultimate family symbol, a living room sofa) in which Howard has his last, best chance to confront the ruins of his own making.

The heart of the movie — its poetic foundation — is found in a twentysomething character named Sky (Sarah Polley), the very symbol of grace and forgiveness. Dressed in red, blue and white, Sky walks into the story carrying a large blue urn, filled with her mother's ashes, and tails Howard like an angel. But what's really inside that urn? Our hope? Our ideals? Our better nature?

"Don't Come Knocking" is not for everyone. The mishmash of poetry and allegory, humor and drama might strike less adventurous audiences as too quirky. And in truth, there is not a single character in the movie that carries the emotional power of Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) in "Paris, Texas." Yet standing way, way back from their subject, Wenders and Shepard have created a daring and provocative film about American myth, American truth, American hope and American failure in this very uncertain time.