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Wenders the wanderer

The director's journey again takes him into the heart of America with 'Don't Come Knocking.'

German-born director Wim Wenders has made some beautiful films populated by lonesome wanderers — and to feel them purely, you must often commit to a kind of journey as well. His best movies have their own emotional climates, their own exotic gravities. You get lost for a while, stepping into the center of a Wenders film. He doesn't leave you with much of a road map. But there's plenty of music and mood and humanity, and an atmosphere that's conducive to reflection.

Wenders, 60, made his first movies in Germany but experienced his cinematic breakthrough in America with "Paris, Texas," a tender, haunting story about a wanderer and broken love (written by Sam Shepard) that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984. Two of his loveliest films are "Wings of Desire" (1987) and "Buena Vista Social Club" (1998) — one about angels wandering in the streets and skies of divided Berlin, the other a documentary about forgotten masters of Cuban music wandering the streets of Havana.

(enlarge photo) Wim Wenders, director of "Don't Come Knocking." Reviews of the movie

The director has had a long fascination with America, with themes of loneliness and longing, with music. He did an entire film propelled by the spirit of Portuguese fado, another on the blues, yet another on Willie Nelson. "My life was saved by rock 'n' roll," he once said. "It was this kind of music that, for the very first time in my life, gave me a feeling of identity, the feeling that I had a right to enjoy, to imagine, and to do something. Had it not been for rock 'n' roll, I might be a lawyer now."

Wenders' latest movie (which opens today) is "Don't Come Knocking, " a bookend film, of sorts to "Paris, Texas," with Wenders and Shepard once again telling a story about an American man who's lost his way. This time, the wandering American is over-the-hill cowboy actor Howard Spence — played by Shepard — who rides off the set of movie called "Phantom of the West" only to encounter phantoms of a different kind.

During South by Southwest, Wenders visited Austin and talked with the American-Statesman about music and movies and Texas, about the American West and the American male. It was a scene that felt a little bit like something out of a Wenders movie: deserted Fifth Street bar, a Saturday morning, delicate light, delicate echo, bartender in a wool cap cleaning last night's glasses.

The director sits at the distant end of a long bar, atop a stool that seems a little too low. He has wavy hair and almond-framed glasses and looks younger than his years. Wenders is a most gentle and understated man. He talks softly, expresses a lot with his eyes, thinks a long time about each question. Sometimes, lost in thought, he glances northward toward the front door, toward the morning light.

Austin American-Statesman: For all of us who love it, "Paris, Texas" was a great gift. But a part of me imagines that it was special for you, too, that maybe you learned things — the way you collaborated with Sam Shepard, or explored certain themes — that advanced your career as a filmmaker. Do you see the film as a gift, personally?

Wim Wenders: It was a great gift in my life. I'd been in America since 1978, and made two films — "Lightning Over Water" and Hammett" — but these were not the films I set out to make (here). I felt I was at a dead end. And it was only when Sam and I teamed up and decided to write that I realized this was what I'd come here for.

I had never believed much in the narrative — all of my stories, until then, were always too meandering, always way too long, sort of going in circles. But with Sam, for the first time, I trusted the flow of that very simple story. And with Sam's help, for the very first time, I really went with the flow. "Paris, Texas" was so linear and simple — and driven by something so powerful, sort of a river. It was the first time I felt I was in my little boat of a movie on that sort of a river.

"Paris, Texas" was a great thing for me. And it allowed me to return home . . . after seven years in America . . . and not be defeated.

From opening to closing, what sets "Paris, Texas" apart is tone. And sure enough, tone has been the vital ingredient in every film you've made since. I know you're really influenced by music, but still — tone is a musical word, and you're in a visual medium.

The music in "Paris, Texas" — and ever since — isn't just an ingredient. It's almost the power of what the film is all about. And "Paris, Texas" marked the beginning of something that I really didn't want to let go of afterward.

I knew Ry Cooder was going to make the score of that film, from the very first day of the shooting . . . and Ry actually played it as he stood in front of the film screen, with the projector running, playing his guitar. He was inspired by the way Miles Davis had done the score for "Elevator to the Gallows," so he, too, stood in front of the screen, playing the guitar as we ran the scenes over and over, until he felt happy with it. In a strange way, his guitar was like an instrument that seemed to capture the film one more time.

Yet the narrative — the way the plot advances, the way you worked with images — that was very musical as well.

That was a departure for me. Until "Paris, Texas" I'd made all my films in a premeditated way. The lighting, everything. The night before, I would sort of scribble down my little story boards. (He draws little scenes on an envelope — close-ups, broad shots — to demonstrate). I knew when I was going to reverse angles, when I was going to do the tight shot. I knew exactly how I was going to shoot.

In "Paris, Texas" — for the first time in my life — I would deliberately forbid this to happen. I always came to the set in the morning with no idea how I was going to shoot . . . never a first set up . . . and it drove the production manager crazy. In the beginning, it was just (me, and the lead actor), Harry Dean Stanton. We'd just play a scene in the landscape, and try to find out how it naturally would come into place. It doesn't sound so important, but it was a big departure. I was totally driven by character and sense of place.

"Don't Come Knocking" is a little bit of a cousin to "Paris, Texas."

It is a distant cousin. But the truth is, neither Sam nor I — 20 years ago — would have dared to write or act in anything like this one. "Paris, Texas" is really sort of a tragic story. Travis (Stanton) is the film. We were seeing the film from the inside of his soul. But in "Don't Come Knocking," we had this sort of ironic distance. None of us remotely identified with Howard (a washed-up cowboy movie actor, played by Shepard). We liked him. But we knew he was a loser. The women (in the film) are really the heroes of this story — as Howard is just falling apart in front of us.

After seeing the film, I wrote down these words: "Howard is an absent father, a man who has trouble facing up to accountability, his appetites forever colliding with this last little whisper of moral decency. The man likes to be seen, but not examined. He sits on his broken sofa — befuddled, stunned, surrounded by the wreckage of his own making." He's a little bit of America, yes? Howard is America.

Yeah. You can see him as a metaphor for other cowboys in high places, trying to live up to conflict, and he's (messed) it all up. . . . The only person who can get him off of his sofa is (the female character named) Sky, who comes to him in the spirit of forgiveness.

It's interesting that Howard is offered forgiveness. Yet most of the world is not looking at America with forgiving eyes right now.

I know. We're in a very, very strange place, inhabiting a strange world in which the very basis of this country — or even the basis of Christianity — has been perverted. Maybe Howard is a symbol of that perversion. He's lost his way. . . . and (yes), it is a rare notion for someone to say, "OK. We've made lots of mistakes . . . but it's a good thing that you tried, and it matters to me that you're alive."

Men in this country are all so preoccupied with other things. Careers. Politics. Fame and fortune. Men, more than women, have started believing in the fact that they can buy everything, consume everything, just change everything. They can also swap families, the idea of family, and give up on any responsibility to indulge in a sort of freedom that, in the end, is just a lack of freedom. Had we taken Howard seriously, from the beginning, we would have had to shoot ourselves in the head.

The West, the Cowboy, the Actor: These are loaded mythic images for Americans. When you did "Paris, Texas," our president was a retired actor who'd played a cowboy. When you shot "Don't Come Knocking," our president is a man whose behaviors are often equated with that of a cowboy.

Yeah. And isn't it too bad that the cowboy, the very figure of the cowboy, is so far removed from reality. Look at the genre of the western. What is that really about? It's not about the longing to belong somewhere, to find a home . . . it's about longing for a purpose. All these restless men in the westerns — each and every one of them — roam around just wishing for someone to tie them down and tell them they gotta do this.

There's always the inevitable scene when the cowboy stands there with the woman in his life — and he realizes this is the woman of his life, and he should remain in this place. But there is always something that pulls these cowboys to the horizon. They say they're coming back, but we know they won't . . . so he wastes his life. The man and woman's lives are wasted.

There's a certain tragedy in that promise of a freedom that America still holds — something that keeps it from accepting responsibility. The western is a very narcissistic genre, and American cinema has always had that aura of narcissism. And at this time in history, I think America is suffering from its own image, like from nothing else.

You've traveled a lot in the American West. Knowing that you've seen a lot of Texas — from Houston to "Paris, Texas" to West Texas — I was hoping you might talk a bit about what distinguishes our state, in your eyes, from the rest of the West.

Texas is probably as American as you can get — more than California, which is a planet of its own, or the East. Texas is almost the definition of what America is all about. When I (first) traveled through Texas in '82 — and I think I've been in every town, seen every back road — I felt I was in the heart of a mythical America, an America that I always felt could not exist. Yet it did, in Texas.

For all the films you've shot in America, you've also done this definitive work — "Wings of Desire" — that touches on themes of detachment while tapping into the soul of Berlin in the waning days of the Berlin Wall. Have you, the native German, thought of taking your camera back to Germany?

"Wings of Desire" was that effort to redefine that soul, that German soul, to come to terms with history, to put a finger on what it was like to be German. I mean, Berlin is my favorite city on the planet. But since '93, I've made seven films in English. . . . I now know more about Montana and Texas and Utah than Saxony. I feel that for once I've expressed everything I need to say. It's really urgent, really important, for me to go back to Germany.

Shepard refers to an American identity, forever lost, when talking about "Knocking." Yet Germany has its own identity issues, yes? "Who are we?"

My generation — born right after (World War II) — was born into a total no-man's land. We were the first generation of Germans who didn't want anything more than for this nationality and identity to disappear. My generation is among the most fervent Europeans, for we realized if ever we could acquire a new identity, it was going to be European. I think Germans are the best Europeans of all, because they realized that was their only chance (after war), to come up with a new way of grounding themselves. That's why the historic friendship between de Gaulle and Adenauer defined my generation more than anything else. These were old men, but they were doing the right thing.

But don't you think America — narcissistic culture that we are — can learn something from Germany's recent self-examination? I was blown away by the new German film "Sophie Scholl" — which deals directly with the power of conscience set against the lure of conformity and nationalism. These are big issues in America right now.

Well, remember: It took the Germans a long time, 50 years, to finally start the work they had somehow refused to do. It was all too much after the war, too much for my father's generation.

Your movies have showcased fado, blues, Cuban music, Nick Cave, Willie Nelson. What can America learn from its own musical tradition. Is there a saving grace in our musical legacy?

Contemporary music, rock 'n' roll, jazz, blues, rap: They're all children of the big Mother of Blues in America. Rock 'n' roll and movies still have immediacy. Of course, they've been endlessly commercialized and obviously perverted. But every now and then, someone reinvents it, gives us the goods, sings the truth and defines the moment. I still strongly believe in films and music as elements of redefinition, and sometimes even revolution.

Will you have time to hear some music in Austin?

No . . . but I'll see Terrence (Malick) today. He's coming to the movie, and that's going to make my day.

Have you seen "The New World," (Malick's latest film)?

I've seen it five times. It's one of the gigantic movies in history. There's nothing out that comes remotely close to it. The last thing I saw that was that big was (Stanley Kubrick's) "2001: A Space Odyssey" — and that was 40 years ago.