Until the End of the World

A Pharaonic work that went terribly wrong.

Have you ever tried to do something extremely complicated and ambitious and failed because of the enormity of what you were trying to do? I bet that even those to whom this has never happened will be able to name some examples: Pharaonic public works that went wrong or never came to fruition in full, private projects and companies that failed because of their own mistakes. There will be no shortage of examples, and I think we can add this film to that list, since the main flaw stems from the ambitions of its creator.

Wim Wenders is one of the great German directors of our time and no one can deny him this merit, not even those who don't really appreciate his style, or who criticize him (with some propriety) for having transformed, in recent years, into that kind of director that he criticized at the beginning of his career. However, what he wanted to do in this film was a task far beyond his capabilities and ingenuity. An epic lasting more than twenty hours that was condensed into a summary of three and a half hours and, years later, partially restored in the form of the “director's version”, lasting almost six hours. I made the mistake of trying to see precisely the latter, believing that I was seeing the version closest to the creator's vision. However, what he gives us is so uninteresting and so confusing that I wasted my time.

The story begins with the threat of an Indian nuclear satellite, which will crash to earth, and then introduces Claire, a young woman who seems to be looking for a direction in her life in the midst of a futile existence. After a car accident in which she meets two bank robbers, she agrees to take the stolen money to Paris, in exchange for a percentage. In the midst of this, she helps a mysterious man who appears to be fleeing from a murderer and who steals some of her money. Committed to recovering him, she follows him around the world and ends up hiring a private detective.

As I...