"KIngs of the Road"

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

This movie is something of a miracle. I will never forget it--it pops into my head all the time, and I never think any less of it. (There is one moment that is a little heavy-handed, I won't say which. It represents the one aspect of the film I take issue with, its sexual politics, which seem part and parcel of the manly romanticism that I find so profoundly moving.) The German title means "in the course of time." Does any movie have a more voluptuous sense of time passing? This is a road movie that actually captures the alternately haunting and enervating quality of a long road trip. It's no wonder: Wenders and company wandered around the border area, more or less making up the film as they shot it.

Incredible use of music. It plays a funny kind of game. One theme of the film is the "colonization of the unconscious" of postwar Germany by American culture. As in other early Wenders movies, we have nods to John Ford and Nick Ray, but also a portable 45 player that plays "Kings of the Road"-- and "Just Like Eddie," wherein a German guy (Heinz) sings about wanting to be like an American guy. No one else has commented on this in print, to my knowledge. There is also that incredible ballad at the end, synched to the one of the most beautiful crane shots of all time. (There are tons of perfect camera movements here, including one where Robery dives over a little hill and the camera cranes up to reveal a whole plain.) "9 Feet Over the Tarmac" -- it sounds like a bunch of German dudes trying to approximate Gram Parsons.... (It's Improved Sound Limited, an obscure Krautrock band who partook of none of the experimentation that the genre has come to be associated with.) Robert recites a line from "Idiot Wind" at one point, while spreading his arms in imitation of a dashboard figurine.

There's also the death-of-cinema stuff. It feels all the more poignant because , it's tied closely to the conditions of German culture and filmmaking at the time of its making. Production had decreased to a trickle. The German New Wave hadn't proved to be commercially viable and the most profitable films made in the republic were soft-core porn. The last remnants of the glory days of Germany's cinema--represented by the old projectionist at the beginning--are dying off. But it's not a reactionary tract---also reflects an ambivalence about German culture and history typical of the New Wave. The projectionist was a member of the Nazi party.

The part of the film where Robert and Bruno travel on moped to the former's childhood home (on an island! shades of Bande à part) and find it in ruins.... The return to home is just barely sentimentalized, and they leave as brusquely as they arrived. The final showdown in the abandoned American military barracks, with the phone still connected to the American operator.... The themes are crystallized. Robert reveals something of his backstory. Bruno is revealed to be something of a failure, a coward....

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Gah. New answers, please.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I can imagine this is NOT a lot of people's cup of tea. Some critics talk about Wenders' "road films" (this one, Alice in the Cities, The Wrong Movement) with a sense of retrospective embarrassment. Maybe there's something rotten about it, something that I'm connected to that doesn't speak well of me?

Anyhow. All hail Robby Muller.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Do you have to love the cinema to love this movie?

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Some of the music (including the closing song) is available in RealAudio on this page: http://www.wim-wenders.com/movies/movies_spec/kingsoftheroad/kingsoftheroad.htm

(One of those movies for which some of the incidental music isn't very special, but I love it b/c just listening to it brings the moments of the film to mind...)

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

"I"ve been double-crossed for the very last time, and now I'm finally...free."

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:35 (twenty-two years ago)

See, I haven't even seen this film in two years, but I remember it like I saw it yesterday. That's something!

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Do you have to love the cinema to love this movie?

No offense, but eat me. How am I supposed to say I don't like the movie now?

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:37 (twenty-two years ago)

I didn't mean that someone who loves cinema couldn't hate this movie. I just wonder if someone who wasn't keyed into the whole cinema-love that this film oozes could love it....

People on ILX are so contentious.... (sez the pot)

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:39 (twenty-two years ago)

heh.

To be fair, I missed a lot of the symbolism you cited above, and to be even fairer, I wasn't paying close attention. I went in expecting little, and got it.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:41 (twenty-two years ago)

symbolism? do you mean like the heinz stuff? i'd think the rest is right on the surface, but maybe that's what i mean by my being unusually tuned into it.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I just wonder if someone who wasn't keyed into the whole cinema-love that this film oozes could love it....

It's not a matter of love, it's a matter of style. I'm just as prone to analyzing and romanticizing and cynicizing (new word!) the cinema as much as the next movie lover, but I don't like Wenders approach, not here, and not in general. I don't enjoy his particular brand of veltschmertz. I'd much rather watch Stardust Memories, or the parade at the end of 8 1/2. My experience with movies is fraught with my own personal (not national) neuroses, and I appreciate a director who admits the same thing.

Or maybe I'm just unsympathetic to Germans.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:49 (twenty-two years ago)

And I saw "Kings of the Road" only once, on video, at a friend's house, while stoned. I am in no position to discuss it in detail. These are broad opinions I'm offering here.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 05:51 (twenty-two years ago)

But don't let me kill a perfectly good thread. Come on, Amateurist! Attack me!

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 06:07 (twenty-two years ago)

like i said, i can see why this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. i'm interested in thoughts and impressions of this film, not a classic/dud judgement.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 06:10 (twenty-two years ago)

If you want this thread to survive, you're eventually going to have to attack someone.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 06:19 (twenty-two years ago)

i hope you're joking.

Derek Malcolm on this film: http://film.guardian.co.uk/Century_Of_Films/Story/0,4135,391018,00.html

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 07:03 (twenty-two years ago)

(I was joking, yes, about the fact that apparently no one else has seen it.)

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 07:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I love this film.

I think the phrase 'road movie' is a bit of a facile term to apply to this film. True, there's travelling and roads and that, but, to me, 'Kings Of The Road' has more in common with Tarkovsky's 'The Sacrifice' than, say, 'The Cannonball Run'. Is there a better term to describe slow, measured film-making like this?

Robby Müller is a god. I was surprised to see that he did the cinematography for '24 Hour Party People'.

Radiohead's 'Exit Music (for a film)' reminds me of the music that's played in the bit where they are throwing stones around the disused quarry. Shame I can't get those RealAudio links to work on your link, amateurist.

― Alfie (Alfie), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 07:37 (twenty-two years ago)

art films?

it does belong to a particular generation of art films though, one that professed a return to the image, an indifference or hostility to classical narrative form.... a lot of emphasis on the privileged moment. i think godard and antonioni are the forefathers of this style. i would say aside from wenders and tarkovsky others i could throw into the category would be oliveira (his work since rite of spring; he's actually much older than godard and a bit older than antonioni), syberberg, angelopoulos, carax. it's a kind of film i feel very close to and while i recognize its limitations i also kind of exalt in them.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 13:49 (twenty-two years ago)

oh and even terence davies (my perennial favorite) belongs here, at least his work before the house of mirth (in which he reconciles with classical narrative for better or worse).

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

well, KoR is IMO pretty much the exact definition of a road movie, where the road takes a leading role and dictates the two men's relationship.
I'm quite attracted to these themes and to the feeling of utter loneliness so dominant in 70's German culture, but in this same vein I much prefer 'Alice in the Cities'

― Fabrice (Fabfunk), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)

that one is great as well!

it is definitely a road movie, it ends with a song about riding around in a rig!

"sometimes i get tired / of the coffee shops and fast food"

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 14:07 (twenty-two years ago)

i like it when he takes a nice long shit on the beach

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

speaking of which, tonight I'll watch the new 'False Movement' DVD, I picked up last w-e. Haven't seen that one in 10 years or so

― Fabrice (Fabfunk), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

yes! Tracer. that's part of what I mean by privileged moments--little bits of business that are lingered over but would be irrelevant to a conventional narrative. That was Wenders' avowed goal and his hopes for the cinema (at the time he believed the time of classical narrative had ended; in that respect he and his cohorts have a lot to do with the "Hollywood doesn't tell stories anymore" critical trope). Obviously as a prescription this doesn't hold too much water, but look what Wenders does with it!

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 14:22 (twenty-two years ago)

talk about form and theme being inseparable!

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

i like it when he takes a nice long shit on the beach

Ha, I was always struck by how the sand looks so white that it could be snow.

― Alfie (Alfie), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

four weeks pass...

Can we revive this?
I watched 'Wrong Move' the other day, 10 years or so after having seen it first, and had some problems with the stream-of-consciouness rhythm of the dialogue, how these characters drift side by side but never connect (eg the long promenade along the Rhine). Well I guess that's pretty much the theme of the movie...

― Fabrice (Fabfunk), Wednesday, 17 September 2003 07:58 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven years pass...

http://i.imgur.com/5h73HRv.jpg

― calstars, Saturday, 5 September 2015 13:11 (ten years ago)

http://i.imgur.com/p5yMlkw.jpg

― calstars, Saturday, 5 September 2015 13:12 (ten years ago)

http://i.imgur.com/RBilFRi.jpg

― calstars, Saturday, 5 September 2015 13:13 (ten years ago)

http://i.imgur.com/KxHfjXw.jpg

― calstars, Saturday, 5 September 2015 13:14 (ten years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.