Wim Wenders is one of my favourites. I've learnt a lot from him. We share a number of preoccupations, such as the urge to drift in silence across empty spaces for days on end. His films helped me learn how to traverse landscapes.
His characters are permitted delightful liberties. They are allowed to stretch and yawn, to walk slowly down the street, to stare out of windows for long periods. Hurry is unusual.
(Kings of the Road, 1976)
His people are prone to commence relationships unexpectedly, intuitively. Strangers enjoy each others company and often travel together on important journeys.
I share his love of Cinema and Rock & Roll, of long road trips where very little happens, of the U.S.A being a land of exquisite disappearances.
I'm only interested in one sort of Wenders film and those are the early ones, those made between 1970 and 1987. Preferably they should be shot in black-and-white. His colour films are usually far less compelling. His black-and-white films have a timelessness, a classic quality.
This persistence in continuing to shoot films in monochrome into the 1970s and 80s involves a quiet nostalgia. It is also a major statement of individuality and of sensitivity. These are profound exceptions to the usual fare of the market-place. Today there are very few directors who resemble him at all.
In his black-and-white images there is an extraordinary softness. Somehow he suffuses these images with a palpable tenderness. There is a notable absence of aggression. A languorous sensibility prevails, and it feels to me as if the spirit of his characters manages to absorb the textures of the images themselves, so that every last element within each frame is touched with softness, lightness.
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