Reflections on Wim Wenders and New German Cinema
Some small thoughts on the early works of one of cinema’s most celebrated auteurs and the movement surrounding his films.
I’ve been slowly getting acquainted with the works of Wim Wenders over the past few weeks. Needless to say, they have left me in a state of contemplative bliss. These god-damned Germans with all their introspective nonsense, they always have something to say. Somehow they managed to find the perfect way to capture the mundane and abstract. And it isn’t some quaint notion too abstract to even make sense like those weird French blokes do.
The Germans are far more simple yet striking with their approach on a subject. The 70s was a great period for them; they found an identity after years of restrictions and… that interesting “little” episode they had in the 30s and 40s. It’s a rough subject to talk about so it’s best to not mention the war. I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it. But it’s necessary to remark how at the very least the war and its aftermath was on everybody’s mind during this period, often as a source for musings and observations.
Funny enough, their films ironically coincide with the release of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, a work depicting the end of WWII whilst attempting to make…
