SUBMERGENCE (France/Germany/Spain - 2018) Directed by Wim Wenders. Written by Erin Dignam. Cast: James McAvoy, Alicia Vikander, Alexander Siddig, Celyn Jones, Reda Kateb, Jannick Schumann, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Julian Bouanich, Loic Corbery, Hakeemshady Mohamed, Hans Torgard, Jess Liaudin, Abdikjam Abdulllahi Aden. (Unrated, 112 mins) All careers have ups and downs, but for those with an intense passion for movies, there's few things more depressing than watching a great filmmaker lose their way and fall into a pattern of sustained collapse. Along with trailblazers like Werner Herzog, Volker Schlondorff, Margarethe von Trotta, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders was one of the key figures in the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s. Important Wenders works from that era, like 1974's ALICE IN THE CITIES, 1976's KINGS OF THE ROAD and 1977's THE AMERICAN FRIEND, remain revered by cineastes and studied in film courses to this day. After his 1982 American debut HAMMETT flopped, Wenders returned to Europe and came back strong with 1984's PARIS, TEXAS, which gave Harry Dean Stanton the role of his career, and 1987's WINGS OF DESIRE, his masterpiece and an often breathtaking work of art that found Wenders at the peak of his powers. But over the last 25 years, something's gone wrong. Like Herzog, Wenders found himself more interested in documentaries, and he enjoyed the biggest commercial success of his career with 1999's BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, where he followed guitarist Ry Cooder to Havana to track down and pay tribute to an obscure collective of elderly Cuban musicians. In addition, he also directed several U2 music videos, and he helmed an episode of the PBS documentary series THE BLUES, among other short films and smaller, personal projects.
Throughout this period, following 1991's UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, Wenders continued exploring non-fiction while his narrative features were proving to be one forgettable disappointment after another: 1993's FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! was a decidedly inferior sequel to WINGS OF DESIRE that nobody liked; 1997's THE END OF VIOLENCE had some interesting moments amidst a generally muddled story involving Hollywood movie producers, government surveillance, and illegal immigrants; 2001's THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL is aggressively unwatchable, co-written by U2's Bono and headlined by Jeremy Davies in possibly the most annoyingly mannered performance in the history of motion pictures. It remains Wenders' worst film by a country mile, one whose cause wasn't helped by co-star Mel Gibson, going for some arthouse cred as a bellowing detective in a back and neck brace, telling an interviewer that it was--and he wasn't wrong--"as boring as a dog's ass;" and 2005's middling DON'T COME KNOCKING reunited Wenders with PARIS, TEXAS writer Sam Shepard but with significantly lesser results. 2005's post-9/11 drama LAND OF PLENTY is really his only consistently good scripted film after 1991. It more fully develops his half-baked surveillance themes from THE END OF VIOLENCE, and it got a big boost from Michelle Williams and a career-best performance by John Diehl, a veteran TV actor (he was Zito on MIAMI VICE) who took the opportunity and ran with it, but it's one of Wenders' least-known and least-seen films. Wenders stays busy and still earns significant accolades when it comes to his documentaries, most notably 2011's PINA, 2014's Oscar-nominated THE SALT OF THE EARTH, and the upcoming POPE FRANCIS: A MAN OF HIS WORD. But of his four scripted features over the last decade, two--2008's PALERMO SHOOTING (one of Dennis Hopper's final films) and 2016's THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF ARANJUEZ--remain unreleased in the US, while 2015's EVERY THING WILL BE FINE was a stilted, somnambulant Atom Egoyan knockoff with James Franco that was pointlessly shot in 3D, which hardly mattered since it went straight to VOD anyway.
That brings us to Wenders' latest, SUBMERGENCE, which again spotlights the esteemed filmmaker's ongoing inability to function outside of the documentary genre. It's based on a 2011 novel by J.M. Ledgard, but not helping matters is that the screenplay adaptation was entrusted to Erin Dignam, the same writer behind Sean Penn's 2017 embarrassment THE LAST FACE. As in that film, we have a blossoming romance between two driven but lost souls being intruded upon by career dedication, Third World strife, geopolitical concerns, godawful writing, and a director with a message that gets mired in lugubrious self-indulgence. To his credit, Wenders doesn't come close to approaching the smugness of Sean Penn, but make no mistake, this could very easily be titled THE LAST FACE II: SUBMERGENCE. The film chronicles the whirlwind romance between James More (James McAvoy) and Danny Flinders (Alicia Vikander) after they meet at a Normandy bed-and-breakfast resort. He's a Scottish-born MI-6 counterterrorism agent undercover as a water engineer and awaiting instructions for his next assignment in Somalia. She's a biomathematician prepping for a deep sea dive in a high-tech submersible off the coast of Greenland to study the origins of life. They court in vague riddles, usually with clunky nautical references. Lunch dates don't get much hotter than a monotone Danny droning "The ocean has five layers...the first one is epipelagic..." or James making his move when responding to her question "What's your favorite water body?" with a come hither "The human body."
He's eventually sent on his mission and is promptly abducted and held prisoner by Somali jihadists, who attempt to brainwash him into believing in their cause as he all the while insists he's just a water engineer. This leads to a real attention-grabbing conversation with a Somali doctor (Alexander Siddig) about well construction and water filtration systems. Danny, meanwhile, gets ready for her dive but is troubled by James' sudden disappearance and his unanswered texts. She tries to focus on her work, as evidenced by one breathlessly thrilling scene that's almost as riveting as Donald Sutherland's clandestine, 15-minute conspiratorial park bench exposition dump on Kevin Costner in JFK, where Danny's examining some large rock formations near the shore and tells a fellow researcher "If you come closer, they're like tiny trees...this one here is a marriage between a fungus and a cyanobacteria," adding "It dissolves from life into non-life." At this point, Vikander could very well be referring to the pages of Dignam's script.
If SUBMERGENCE has one thing working in its favor, it's that it certainly looks good, thanks to the contributions of regular Gaspar Noe cinematographer Benoit Debie, who's also worked on films as varied as Dario Argento's THE CARD PLAYER, Harmony Korine's SPRING BREAKERS, and Ryan Gosling's LOST RIVER. But for as utterly inert and lethargically lifeless as the dramatic elements are, Wenders would've been better served by making a documentary about either a biomathematician deep-sea diving off the coast of Greenland or a water engineer working with locals to construct a water filtration system in Somalia. Much like what's happened with Terrence Malick's recent string of duds, SUBMERGENCE comes across like Wim Wenders directing a parody of a Wim Wenders film. And like Malick, he's still attracting A-list stars who want to work with him, even though they must realize they aren't quite getting the same guy who made WINGS OF DESIRE. There's still enough cache in his legend that you can't blame McAvoy and Vikander for wanting to say "I was in a Wim Wenders film." At this point, the 72-year-old filmmaker has nothing to prove to anyone. His classic films are eternal and no amount of MILLION DOLLAR HOTELs, EVERY THING WILL BE FINEs, and SUBMERGENCEs will diminish their impact. Sure, it's not a so-bad-it-makes-you-question-your-will-to-live fiasco like THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL, a film that moved at the pace of plate tectonics and was so inconceivably awful that it took four sittings over a two-day period to get through because I could only endure it in 30-minute increments and I refused to let it defeat me. No, SUBMERGENCE is not on that level of bad, but it's a chore to sit through. It's not completely fair to say Wenders has lost his mojo, but this and almost all of his "commercial" features of the last quarter century don't play to his current strengths. Concerns and priorities evolve over a long career, and it's obvious that his passion lies with documentary filmmaking and not with ponderous drivel like SUBMERGENCE.
EVERY THING WILL BE FINE (Germany/Canada/France/Sweden/Norway - 2015)
One of the major voices of the 1970s New German Cinema who reached his pinnacle in the next decade with the classics PARIS, TEXAS (1984) and WINGS OF DESIRE (1987), Wim Wenders has enjoyed his biggest success in the latter half of his career with documentaries like THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (1999), PINA (2011), and his contributions to the PBS series THE BLUES. His first narrative feature since 2008's surreal PALERMO SHOOTING (one of Dennis Hopper's last films, and still unreleased in the US), EVERY THING WILL BE FINE plays more like an homage to SWEET HEREAFTER-era Atom Egoyan, from the crux of its story being a tragedy uniting several people, to its cold, wintry Canadian setting. Judging from the end result, Wenders can't do vintage Egoyan any better than Egoyan can these days. Making superfluous use of 3-D, which is limited mostly to some falling snowflakes for the six people who managed to see this in a theater, EVERY THING WILL BE FINE offers the most somnambulant cast this side of Werner Herzog's HEART OF GLASS, headed by James Franco as Tomas Eldan, a struggling Quebecois novelist whose marriage to Sara (Rachel McAdams, with a distracting and stilted Swedish--I think--accent) is in a rough patch. It gets worse when Tomas is involved in a freak accident on a snowy rural road where he thinks he narrowly averted hitting a young boy in a sled but realizes too late that there were two boys on the sled and the other died, pinned under his SUV. This scene, where Tomas thinks he and the surviving kid had a close call but slowly realizes, when the boys' shell-shocked single mother Kate (Charlotte Gainsbourg) asks where the other boy is, that he's accidentally killed the unseen second child, is by far the best in the film and it's all downhill from there.
Of course, even though it was a tragic accident, Tomas is plagued by guilt and half-heartedly attempts suicide, demonstrated in a trite montage where Wenders shows him crashing in a cheap motel, empty booze and pill bottles and torn up papers strewn about the room. The film repeatedly jumps through a few years at a time. Tomas and Sara have split up and he feels compelled to help the devoutly-religious Kate in some way. She's forgiven him and doesn't blame him and though they seem drawn to one another through their mutual grieving, Wenders and screenwriter Bjorn Olaf Johannessen don't indulge anything further, since that would mean something happening. The film takes place over an 11-year period, and every time Wenders seems to be building to something, he calls a time-out and jumps ahead four years. It's especially frustrating in the last section, when Tomas gets a letter from troubled, 16-year-old Christopher (Robert Naylor), who was five when he survived the accident that killed his little brother. Tomas has become a bestselling author, channeling his pain into prose and becoming rich and famous, and while Christopher is a fan of his work, he feels his brother's death has somehow worked in Tomas' favor while his mother has never really recovered. While Tomas and his second wife Ann (Marie-Josee Croze) are away on a brief book tour, someone--obviously Christopher--breaks into their house and urinates all over their bed. Just as EVERY THING WILL BE FINE seems poised to turn into a thriller of some kind, the film abruptly ends in the most enraging way possible, with Franco--who's about as believable a Quebecois novelist named Tomas as you'd expect--turning to the camera and smiling. Did Wenders just feel "Hey, it's been a while, I should probably make a drama again"? There's some beautiful cinematography by the venerable Benoit Debie, but EVERY THING WILL BE FINE is a film that keeps stopping itself dead in its tracks. Scenes crescendo into nothing and collapse, actors appear and disappear (Peter Stomare has one scene as Tomas' publisher; frequent Wenders actor Patrick Bauchau plays Tomas' dementia-addled father). It seems to be actively avoiding being about anything. The actors seem to be partially sedated, even more so as the film goes on. When a remarried Sara has a chance meeting with Tomas at a Patrick Watson concert (yes, time-killing concert footage) and slaps him, it seems less out of anger than to simply revive Franco. A comatose Wenders misfire like 2001's THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL moved at the pace of plate tectonics but at least had an insane performance by a neck-braced Mel Gibson to occasionally liven things up--there's nothing of the sort in EVERY THING WILL BE FINE. Life is filled with disappointments, regrets, and unresolved issues--which can make for compelling cinema but not when it's done the way Wenders does it here. It seems like a sincere enough film, but what's the point? (Unrated, 119 mins)
THE CONFIRMATION (UK/US/Canada - 2016)
The kind of slight, low-key character piece that goes over like gangbusters at film festivals but plays to crickets and tumbleweed in general release, THE CONFIRMATION is the directing debut of Oscar-nominated NEBRASKA screenwriter Bob Nelson. As in that film, we have a story set in a blue collar town where most of the residents have seen better days. Anthony (MIDNIGHT SPECIAL's Jaeden Lieberher) has it pretty good other than his ambivalence about being prodded into confession and confirmation by his church-going mom Bonnie (Maria Bello) and stepdad Kyle (Matthew Modine). Bonnie and Kyle are going away to a church-sponsored couples retreat for the weekend, leaving Anthony in the care of his alcoholic, sporadically-employed carpenter dad Walt (Clive Owen). Slumped-shouldered Walt has been dealt some shitty hands and is beaten down by life, but he's trying to make things work. He's on his latest attempt to quit drinking and isn't sure what to do with Anthony over the weekend, but that soon becomes a moot point as the pair encounter one obstacle after another. Walt gets a lucrative job lined up for Monday morning, but his expensive and sentimental (they were his dad's) specialty tools get stolen from his truck, his truck breaks down, a trip to drop a huge jar of change into a Coinstar machine at the grocery store to get some quick cash is all for naught when Anthony accidentally hits the "Donate" button, and they get locked out of the house when Walt gets an eviction notice. Borrowing Bonnie's SUV--Anthony neglects to tell Walt the brakes need replaced--the pair spend the weekend tracking down Walt's tools BICYCLE THIEF-style, getting help from a variety of odd folks both helpful and dubious, ranging from Walt's fatherly friend Otto (Robert Forster), drunken gun nut Vaughn (Tim Blake Nelson), and eccentric drywaller Drake (Patton Oswalt) whose claim to have the inside info on Walt's tools is negated by the fact that everyone knows he's back on meth.
THE CONFIRMATION is basically a standard redemption saga, with Walt and Anthony bonding and everyone realizing Walt's not such a loser after all. Nelson gives the story time to breathe and find its way, even with the trite symbolism of carpenter Walt "building" a relationship with his son. Walt tries to keep his temper in check as the deck is constantly stacked against him and and does everything he can to not cave to temptation and disappoint his son (after a bad withdrawal episode the first night, the first thing out of Walt's mouth in the morning is "Are you OK? Did I hurt you?"). Though he's hardly a textbook role model, Walt tries to dispense life lessons to the boy, and of course, he learns just as much from the wise-beyond-his-years Anthony. There's some legitimate surprises in the development of some of the characters: Anthony forms a friendship with Vaughn's sensitive son Allen (Spencer Drever); when Walt finds out who stole his tools, he feels sympathy rather than anger; and after constantly hearing from Walt what a useless tool he is, we're surprised to find that Kyle is actually a genuinely nice and sincere guy once we meet him. There's no big scenes or huge plot reveals in THE CONFIRMATION. It's a quiet, working-class indie film where the actors probably wore there own clothes and packed their own lunches for Nelson's heartfelt labor of love. It's not much to get excited about, but Owen and Lieberher make a good team, and fans of the actors will definitely want to check it out. (PG-13, 101 mins)
