"Land of Plenty" is a thought-provoking film. How couldn't it be? Wenders, a provocative director, taking on 9/11 and its aftermath? Truly, not to disparage Wenders, a monkey with a digital camera and a placard reading "Tell me about 9/11" could create something worth watching given the subject.
In Wenders case, he has made an insular film focusing on two people, Lana (Michelle Williams) and her Uncle Paul (John Diehl), and the after effects of 9/11 upon both. Lana is a painfully naive 20 yr. old Christian who has just returned from a missionary stint in Palestine (where she witnessed 9/11) to work in a Los Angeles mission while searching for evidence justifying vehement, anti-American sentiment abroad. In her possession is a letter written by her recently deceased mom, Paul's sister. Deliverance of the letter compels here to track down her wayward uncle, the letter's addressee. Paul is in his 50s, a shell-shocked, paranoid Vietnam vet, intent on keeping this country safe from the free-roaming terrorists who are, in his eyes, ubiquitous within the City of Angels.
Wenders draws these characters in such vivid Blue and Red colors that you would have to have your head up your butt not to see that they represent the mindset of Democrats (Lana) and Republicans (Paul). In fact, in various interviews, and during a Q & A after the 3/31/05 screening I attended, Wenders asserted that this film IS "a political film."
Though he feels he has not made a polemical film: he has. You will be hard-pressed not to choose sides while watching the film.
As for Wenders, he leaves little doubt as to his choice: true Blue.
To that end, one need only take into consideration Wenders' mocking presentation of Paul as a hyper-vigilant nut case roaming L.A. in a beat-up, surveillance-equipment-crammed van in search of terrorist activity. Paul undertakes this toothless work functioning as a self-appointed renegade operative for Homeland Security, who have no connection with him. Paul's right hand man, Jimmy, is a grungy garage mechanic whose only connections to top-secret sources are Internet search engines. They bring to mind as Beavis & Butthead, with not much more at their disposal than Harriet-the-Spy in terms of fruitful resources. But for one scene showing Paul suffering the ill effects of post-war syndrome during a gripping nightmare, Wenders shows him to be something of a lunatic rube--a virtual laughing stock. Indeed, most of the movie's laughs come at Paul's expense because just about every action he undertakes furthers one's opinion of him as a maligned, pathetic xenophobe. (No doubt, if this movie finds a US distributor, most patriotic Vietnam vets will express their outrage at being presented as loose cannon extremists.)
Wenders' presentation of Paul clearly displays his loathing for such Reds: the pro-war, high-angst, flag-waving, Dubbya-backing, kill'-em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em out folk who tote, and vote for, the conservative line.
It's a credit to John Diehl that his intense, career-defining portrayal of Paul embellishes the shallow character created by Wenders. Diehl never allows Paul to breakdown completely, despite the various defeats he suffers, and has suffered. You want to like him for to see him overcome his burdens. He's troubled but not entirely lacking heart.
As for Michelle Williams, she is god-awful as Lana. Wenders wrote the part for her, but one wonders if he did so just so that he could see her face on the big screen. With her bobbed black hair and perpetual doe-in-the-headlights countenance, she brings to mind a fifth-rate imitation of Audrey Tattou ("Amelie") and the poor man's Gweneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johannson ("Lost in Translation"). For the most part, she functions as eye candy. At other times she's a distraction. And, in one embarrassing scene--a testament to Wenders' music video work furthering my belief that he had other things in mind when he wrote the part for her--where Lana is seen in isolation wearing headphones while bopping to a tune emanating from her MP3, you beg for someone to push her off the mission's rooftop. In short, Williams fails to ACT, neither adding nuance to Lana's emotions nor any inventive idiosyncrasy to Lana's physical being.
Where Diehl took what he was given and ran with it like a crazed wolverine, Williams was unable to enhance her character, instead, opting to stand around, a vapid clothes horse.
Wenders' presentation of his two main characters in such unmistakable hues ends up reducing Lana and Paul to one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, relegating them to ancillary evidence supporting his messages that mental, spiritual, social and political poverty are bad, and that the USA's polemical political system, which has reduced and divided citizens into two opposing factions, sucks.
The title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, "The Land of Plenty." Cohen's lyrics--And I don't really know who sent me/to raise my voice and say/May the lights in the Land of Plenty/Shine on the truth some day--influence Wenders' directional choices. He employs the song strategically throughout the film, right up to the very end where truncated lyrics: "Shine on/The Truth," float in a slate gray New York skyline above Ground Zero, as if sky-written by a passing plane.
An epitaph? An invocation? A critique? A prayer?
Probably, all of the above.
Despite Michelle Williams' abysmal performance, the conceptual limitations inherent in the rapid creation and completion of the film and the shortcomings of Wenders' obvious one-dimensional characters and biased message, "Land of Plenty" remains a provocative film worth viewing. If for no other reason than to remind us that life ain't always pretty, even here in the land of plenty. One hopes that one U.S. distributor will have the courage to pick up the film and disseminate it nationwide. If nothing else, viewers will come away thinking about just how divisive our Red and Blue political system is and maybe, just maybe, start thinking of how to change it.
In Wenders case, he has made an insular film focusing on two people, Lana (Michelle Williams) and her Uncle Paul (John Diehl), and the after effects of 9/11 upon both. Lana is a painfully naive 20 yr. old Christian who has just returned from a missionary stint in Palestine (where she witnessed 9/11) to work in a Los Angeles mission while searching for evidence justifying vehement, anti-American sentiment abroad. In her possession is a letter written by her recently deceased mom, Paul's sister. Deliverance of the letter compels here to track down her wayward uncle, the letter's addressee. Paul is in his 50s, a shell-shocked, paranoid Vietnam vet, intent on keeping this country safe from the free-roaming terrorists who are, in his eyes, ubiquitous within the City of Angels.
Wenders draws these characters in such vivid Blue and Red colors that you would have to have your head up your butt not to see that they represent the mindset of Democrats (Lana) and Republicans (Paul). In fact, in various interviews, and during a Q & A after the 3/31/05 screening I attended, Wenders asserted that this film IS "a political film."
Though he feels he has not made a polemical film: he has. You will be hard-pressed not to choose sides while watching the film.
As for Wenders, he leaves little doubt as to his choice: true Blue.
To that end, one need only take into consideration Wenders' mocking presentation of Paul as a hyper-vigilant nut case roaming L.A. in a beat-up, surveillance-equipment-crammed van in search of terrorist activity. Paul undertakes this toothless work functioning as a self-appointed renegade operative for Homeland Security, who have no connection with him. Paul's right hand man, Jimmy, is a grungy garage mechanic whose only connections to top-secret sources are Internet search engines. They bring to mind as Beavis & Butthead, with not much more at their disposal than Harriet-the-Spy in terms of fruitful resources. But for one scene showing Paul suffering the ill effects of post-war syndrome during a gripping nightmare, Wenders shows him to be something of a lunatic rube--a virtual laughing stock. Indeed, most of the movie's laughs come at Paul's expense because just about every action he undertakes furthers one's opinion of him as a maligned, pathetic xenophobe. (No doubt, if this movie finds a US distributor, most patriotic Vietnam vets will express their outrage at being presented as loose cannon extremists.)
Wenders' presentation of Paul clearly displays his loathing for such Reds: the pro-war, high-angst, flag-waving, Dubbya-backing, kill'-em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em out folk who tote, and vote for, the conservative line.
It's a credit to John Diehl that his intense, career-defining portrayal of Paul embellishes the shallow character created by Wenders. Diehl never allows Paul to breakdown completely, despite the various defeats he suffers, and has suffered. You want to like him for to see him overcome his burdens. He's troubled but not entirely lacking heart.
As for Michelle Williams, she is god-awful as Lana. Wenders wrote the part for her, but one wonders if he did so just so that he could see her face on the big screen. With her bobbed black hair and perpetual doe-in-the-headlights countenance, she brings to mind a fifth-rate imitation of Audrey Tattou ("Amelie") and the poor man's Gweneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johannson ("Lost in Translation"). For the most part, she functions as eye candy. At other times she's a distraction. And, in one embarrassing scene--a testament to Wenders' music video work furthering my belief that he had other things in mind when he wrote the part for her--where Lana is seen in isolation wearing headphones while bopping to a tune emanating from her MP3, you beg for someone to push her off the mission's rooftop. In short, Williams fails to ACT, neither adding nuance to Lana's emotions nor any inventive idiosyncrasy to Lana's physical being.
Where Diehl took what he was given and ran with it like a crazed wolverine, Williams was unable to enhance her character, instead, opting to stand around, a vapid clothes horse.
Wenders' presentation of his two main characters in such unmistakable hues ends up reducing Lana and Paul to one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, relegating them to ancillary evidence supporting his messages that mental, spiritual, social and political poverty are bad, and that the USA's polemical political system, which has reduced and divided citizens into two opposing factions, sucks.
The title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, "The Land of Plenty." Cohen's lyrics--And I don't really know who sent me/to raise my voice and say/May the lights in the Land of Plenty/Shine on the truth some day--influence Wenders' directional choices. He employs the song strategically throughout the film, right up to the very end where truncated lyrics: "Shine on/The Truth," float in a slate gray New York skyline above Ground Zero, as if sky-written by a passing plane.
An epitaph? An invocation? A critique? A prayer?
Probably, all of the above.
Despite Michelle Williams' abysmal performance, the conceptual limitations inherent in the rapid creation and completion of the film and the shortcomings of Wenders' obvious one-dimensional characters and biased message, "Land of Plenty" remains a provocative film worth viewing. If for no other reason than to remind us that life ain't always pretty, even here in the land of plenty. One hopes that one U.S. distributor will have the courage to pick up the film and disseminate it nationwide. If nothing else, viewers will come away thinking about just how divisive our Red and Blue political system is and maybe, just maybe, start thinking of how to change it.