Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13580 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-26
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 158 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Shot on location in numerous countries, this ambitious Wim Wenders fantasy takes Sam Neill, Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt and a ragtag group in pursuit around the world and back again. Though set in 1999 under the shadow of impending disaster as a wobbly nuclear satellite threatens to Chernobyl the planet, the leisurely gait of their worldwide escapades has a distinctly 1940s-era decadence. The ultimate object of their quest is a machine that records visual information from one person and reconstructs it in the brains of others--granting the miraculous power of sight to the blind for one thing, but even more mystically, enabling a person's dreams to be recorded. When the film seeks resolutions on the most intimate questions of the human soul which dovetail with the possibility of a destroyed world, the film is hampered by the VHS running time, which subtracts several hours from other versions. But numerous joys, not least among them Jeanne Moreau and Max von Sydow as Hurt's parents, inhabit this thought-provoking film. --Alan E. Rapp, Amazon.com

Synopsis
It's 1999. Our planet is on its way to oblivion. Two strangers meet up on a road to Paris and begin the adventure of a lifetime. Soundtrack features U2, Peter Gabriel, Bian Eno, Talking Heads, REM and Neneh Cherry.

Customer Reviews

A flawed masterpiece
'Until the End of the World', along with 'The Buena Vista Social Club' and 'The Lisbon Story' is the most satisfying of Wenders works in the 1990's...The idea stemmed from Wenders and Solveig Dommartin (star of 'Wings of Desire') and was co-written with Australian author Peter Carey ('Oscar & Lucinda'). As with earlier films- 'Kings of The Road', 'The American Friend'- this is a Road Movie. Perhaps the ultimate road movie.

God knows how something this grand-scale got produced- which is one reason to see it alone. Released in 1991 it was probably most famous for its excellent soundtrack- Nick Cave, 'Zoo-TV'-era U2 (their 'good' period), Depeche Mode, REM, Can, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, Julee Cruise (produced by David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti). Though the stand-outs are 'Calling All Angels' (Jane Sibbery & KD Lang) and 'The Adversary' by Crime & The City Solution (one of the bands playing in Berlin in 'Wings of Desire'). The visuals match the music- one of the finest examples of image used against music.

The actors are great- as they meet and break-up and re-find each other across the globe: Lisbon-Berlin-Paris-San Francisco-Shanghai- and the rest. The excellent character of Phillip Winter makes an appearance here as a private detective- continuing his association from the film Wenders followed 'Hammett' with and the low-key 'The Lisbon Story'.

The film is obviously heavily influenced by the seismic social shifts of the late 80's- the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the reunification of Germany, the 'no borders'. For one moment back there it seemed like the millennium was ocurring. It seemed like the millennium would be a good idea; that the future was before us in the present tense. This is what the film feels like.

Set in an idea of 1999, sadly it wasn't that interesting, we have a love triangle acoss the globe. And some ruminations on Wender's theme of the act of seeing. The film is riveting up until the point he halts at Harry Farber's experimentation plant in Australia. Then it becomes ponderous- though still visually striking- the last 45 minutes are mostly a chore...Despite that the film is great- watching it for the third time after several years I was intrigued by the image of characters in flux, in travel. It reminded me of the seemingly inconsiquential motorway shot in 'Solaris' or the recent 'Eureka'. This is an interesting example of SF- very European. There are rumours of a Five-hour version- despite the boring bits of this version, I would love to see it! 'Until the End of the World' is a flawed masterpiece that gets better with age.

The road to nowhere.... The 3-disc version of Until the End of the World
NB: Unfortunately Amazon have bunched together the reviews of the various editions of Until the End of the World together - both the two-and-a-half hour cinema version and the 279-minute director's cut that's available as an import. This review refers to the 3-disc director's cut.


There's a curious symmetry to seeing a film set eight years in a future that's now eight years in the past, but the 279-minute director's cut of Wim Wenders' Continent-hopping sci-fi road movie Until the End of the World feels more like a notebook with the odd doodle in the margin rather than a clearly thought-out film, never getting to grips with any of the themes or ideas it throws up and casually abandons along the way. Words versus images (surprisingly Wenders comes down firmly on the power of the word), art versus technology, impulse versus commitment, the struggle to find meaning in the places you find yourself and people's ability to constantly start over, be it in art, science or life - none get much more than a cursory once-over as it becomes ever clearer that Wenders' destination is more geographical than thematic.

Set in a still far-off 1999, when America's plans to shoot an out of control nuclear satellite out of the sky lead to mild economic and social chaos as the possibility of a chain reaction and the end of the world looms, it's something of a shaggy dog story following Solveig Dommartin's bored party girl across four continents. Surviving a car crash, she looks for a mission in the new life she has been given and finds it in the form of William Hurt's fugitive, who steals some stolen money she's holding for Chick Ortega and Eddy Mitchell's robbers. Following him across the globe with the aid of Rudiger Vogler's private eye and followed herself by her ex and the film's narrator (Sam Neill) and Ernie Dingo's bounty hunter, several countries and a couple of aliases later she discovers he's recording images of his family for his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) with a camera that allows the blind to see that was developed by his father (Max Von Sydow), in hiding from the US government in Australia...

As long as the film is moving from city to city, Wenders is able to sustain some semblance of the illusion of forward motion, but the film stops dead in its tracks when it reaches Australia, which is a big problem. Not only is the end of the world still a long way off, but so is the end of the film - with more than two hours to go it's hard to disguise the fact that there's not much to show for all the mileage covered. If anything, it feels a bit like a long business trip to a place you've never been with people from your office only to find that your appointment's been postponed once you finally arrive, but since the hotel room's already paid for you find yourself sticking around for a day or so anyway killing time. The film does get back on track in the last half hour as the characters become addicted to their own dreams and become completely unable to cope with reality, but you can't help feeling it could have got there a lot quicker.

While Neill, Vogler and Hurt fare well enough and Von Sydow has one good scene, co-scenarist and leading lady Solveig Dommartin makes a poor focus for such a sprawling endeavour. Another in that long line of muses - Catherine Hessling, Cybill Shepherd, Sondra Locke - luring once great directors onto the rocks with their siren call of mediocrity, she's not much of an actress with little screen presence to compensate, while her English delivery doesn't do her many favours. It's telling that one of her best scenes is a (presumably) deliberately awful but surprisingly charming rendition of Thank You For the Days accompanied by piano, drums and didgeridoo that makes up with enthusiasm what it lacks in ability. Still, compared to Adelle Lutz's horrendously awkward phonetic delivery as her best friend Makiko, she's Sarah Bernhardt.

But no film with a hero called Trevor can be all bad, and for all the self-indulgence there are enough good points to keep you watching. Some of Neill's narration is rather good (possibly down to co-writer Peter Carey), there's an eclectic soundtrack that takes in Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, R.E.M., Elvis Costello and pompous soft-rockers U2 among many others, Robby Muller's cinematography is typically impressive and the film makes the outskirts of San Francisco look like a Third World shantytown. Some of the predictions were at least in the right ballpark - satnav systems, the Americans shooting a rogue satellite out of the sky and a joke about the Rolling Stones' 'last' concert - and it only gives into outright xenophobia in a horribly misconceived comic scene in a Japanese hotel. Yet the film is definitely less than the sum of its parts, with Wenders all too clearly going all Hearts of Darkness as he constantly seems to rework the slim premise into whatever latest brainwave has just struck him - with an African epilogue unfilmed, if the producers hadn't pulled the plug he'd probably still be shooting to this day. (As it is, the German DVD has another half hour of deleted scenes and outtakes and it wouldn't be entirely surprising if Wenders delivered an even longer cut some time in the future.) Still, the Bounty Bear was fun...

3-disc German DVD
This is the one to get - the three-disc with a suitcase on the cover. It's the only DVD available with the long cut and it isn't even expensive (or it wasn't when I got it). I believe the plans to release this version in the US have fallen through. A huge film spread across three discs, it's obviously one for a long winter evening! This cut of the film was put together by Wim Wenders, with Sam Neill recording a new voice-over and Wenders regards it as the final cut, certainly preferable to the three-hour cuts released in cinemas. It's over four and half hours, but it's very easy to get through if you're interested in the ideas, the performances and the locations! The picture is fantastic (16:9 anamorphic) with the option of German or English 5.1 audio. I bought this with fingers crossed, because there's always a niggling worry that you might be buying a lemon when you order from overseas, but believe me, this is a handsome package.