Faraway So Close! Part Two

I finished watching Faraway, So Close! this evening. It is odd that I stopped watching the movie last night precisely where I did. Why? Because I did so exactly at the point where the movie gets really weird. A very odd plot was building up until this point, and I'd entirely missed it. It involves Willem Dafoe, who plays a character called "Emit Flesit", or "time itself", backwards. Until he spells his name several times in rapid succession, I never thought to pay attention to the name. But then, with my one rapid firing of several brain cells at once, I thought, "hmm.. why did he spell his name so many times? Is there something important there?". Up until now,I thought Dafoe was playing the devil. However, I guess with all Wenders tried to say about time in this movie, I guess I wasn't so far off base.

So this plot involves all the characters in the movie, including Peter Falk. There is a cute scene involving a couple of security guards freaking out over Falk (he plays himself)and Bruno Ganz (Switzerland's gift to theater)There is a kidnapping, some weapons stealing, and alas, Cassiel dies at the prodding of time -- but he dies a hero. Back when he was an angel, see, he was guardian to a little girl called Raissa. He became human in order to save her from dying, and he dies himself in saving her life.

I am really confused as to how the director of Alice in the City could have made a film this ill-conceived. I started watching again, but this time I switched on the commentary. I'm hoping to find out what he was going for with the movie. 20 minutes into the commentary he admits that this movie doesn't quite meet the expectations he'd had for it. He made it as a gift to the German people, and according to him, the country where it was the least well received was in, you guessed it, Germany.

Having said all this, the movie is not a complete loss. It has some good comedic moments, and some truly wonderful photography. There are also some great shots of Berlin in the early 90's - when Potsdammer Platz was still kind of part of "no man's land", and the Friedrichstrasse, now a fancy shopping street, was literally a hole in the ground. In fact, the movie makes me want to go back to Berlin, particularly the eastern side, and see what has changed since the last time I was there in 1995.