Land of Plenty (2004)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/There isn't too much to like about Wim Wenders' films over the last twenty years. There have been a few bright spots, but for the most part, Wenders' obsession with America has gotten the worst of him. In his prime, few directors since Antonioni were as adept at depicting inner monologues through silence. Wenders' characters were complicated men of few words.Over time Wenders love affair with America somehow convinced him that the 'less is more' approach was failing. Wenders threw his greatest strength out the door and substituted it with what would become, over time and many films, his achilles heel: big ideas.The characters in Land of Plenty aren't really individual people, they are ideas. These characters represent something grander, something excruciatingly ambitious: the American conscience. Lofty goals of this sort often end up as preachy and pretentious and LOP's screenplay is just that. Shot on the cheap, on digital video, LOP feels like noble idea rushed into production without the benefit of enough revisions to weed out the heavy handedness. Films concerned with the traumatic effects of 9/11 are compelled to be both profound and reverential, the problem is profound and reverential seldom make for a worthwhile movie going experience. If there was a rating system based on the number of American flags displayed in a movie, LOP would score full points, as it is, LOP rates very low.

This is another masterpiece from the indomitable Wim Wenders. However, it is only a classic, not a hyper-classic like 'Paris, Texas' (1984) or 'Don't Come Knocking' (2005). Those two films engaged the viewer in desperate anguish and overwhelming emotion from the very first moments and sustained it throughout, whereas in this film, the emotional intensity and involvement only grab the viewer in the last third of the story. This is partly because the film was written and filmed so quickly, with no time for deep maturation of plot structure in order to discover subtler ways to pull the viewer in earlier. The title is ironical and comes from a song by Leonard Cohen, which is used near the end to the usual Wenders devastating effect. He has always been a master at punching us in the solar plexus with his sophisticated use of the best music. Here, as in the succeeding film 'Don't Come Knocking', the searing cinematography of Franz Lustig shows us surfaces beneath which we immediately plunge. The centrepiece of this film is the amazing Michelle Williams. In her, Wenders combines his recurring 'child motif' with his recurring 'angel motif', since Williams plays a character, Lana, who is primarily two things: (1) a 'former child', and (2) currently a working angel. Just as Wenders is probably the only mainstream director who has ever shown a man defecating on screen, in 'Kings of the Road' (1976), so here he may be the only one who has truly shown the intimate moments of silent prayer. And we are not talking of 'The Song of Bernadette' or any sentimental religious picture here, with its simulated devotions and piety, we are talking the real thing. Throughout the film, Williams is shown in extreme closeup whispering her ongoing dialogue with God, saying things like 'Thank you for this day, thank you for this room.' She asks for his blessings and in emergencies even his help. Williams has such extremely unusual personal qualities that she pulls this off completely. She looks like what she is off screen, a reader, a thinker, a collector of first editions. (I'm sure we must bid against each other on Ebay all the time.) Wenders has as usual used his stunning genius for casting to get the perfect match. He has also found another one of his brilliant character actors, always there but always overlooked for years, in John Diehl, to play the paranoid lost uncle, Paul. This is not at all a political film, it is as usual with Wenders a spiritual journey and a revelation of the bleakness at the empty heart of part of the American Dream. What could be emptier than Trona, California, shown here in all its barren devastation, and yet that empty place is where it all comes together, where the richness and redemption of the spirit take place in surroundings so desolate that it can only be The Material World which is being transcended right before our eyes. The ostensible subject of this film is post-September 11 America. But that is only an excuse for the true subject: the human spirit struggling against emptiness, fear, delusion, and loss to achieve some peace, some acceptance, some love and some fulfillment. There is nothing affected about Wim Wenders. He courageously attempts to say the deepest things in the deepest way that the screen allows. It is true that the character Paul is one of the most extreme characters imaginable, a man driven mad by dioxin poisoning and helicopter crashes as a special forces sergeant in Viet Nam. He has taken refuge in reenacting the lost War (which he insists obstinately 'we won') by trying to fight the new enemy, terrorism. He is a one-man surveillance vigilante in a van, who is determined to find the enemy this time and save his country. But it is all a pathetic delusion, and he is slowly and gently brought down from his 'high' into the truth about things by his patient 20 year-old niece whom he has not seen since she was a baby. Eventually, with infinite acceptance and caring, this crazed uncle achieves a grounding in reality after his years of torment, and comes to see the world with the unblinking eyes of Franz Lustig and the sad and tolerant vision of the child-angel. This film is another one of those Wenders miracles.

This is a sort of anti-Wenders film. While most of his films are uplifting, beautiful and spiritual, _Land of Plenty_ is a brutal and unpleasant exposé of American paranoia. It's very well done, and it's frighteningly accurate. Still, I can't imagine any Americans will enjoy watching it.If you're in denial, then you will be offended by this movie (like most of the negative reviewers here). So don't bother.If you're familiar with the paranoia and bigotry that has enveloped this country then this movie will upset you, just as if you had a big wart on your nose, and someone made a film about it. So don't bother.I believe the only people who could possibly enjoy this film are objective (non-American) viewers who do not feel the shame that this movie exposes.I'm rating this film an 8 because it was well done, but I can't recommend it to anyone. It was just too excruciating for me (as it should be for all Americans who share the burden of what our country has turned into). Another film which falls into this category is _House of Sand and Fog_ which one critic called "the feel-bad movie of the year".This movie made me feel like crap. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch _Lisbon Story_ 1000 times and try to recover from this.

This is my maiden foray into the Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF), and my first review of a film featured in the SIFF.The film tells a story of Lana, who is going to LA after her mother passed away, in search of her uncle. She has been travelling the world with her missionary father, and her last place of stay had been Tel Aviv. While we are shown the glistening skyline of LA, we are soon shown the poverty zone, and how Lana feels about leaving one warzone into another, that the war against poverty is not so much different from the world she had left.Her uncle Paul, a Vietnam war veteran exposed to the infamous Agent Orange, is now a self-possessed vigilante, playing his overly zealous part in homeland security, rigging his van into a one-stop travelling security surveillance van. (Heck, even his handphone ringtone is the national anthem!) He randomly tails people deemed suspicious to him, and things get interesting when a man of Arab descent is spotted by him buying boxes of chemicals (the irony of making a dirty bomb from a cleaning agent) and later on, being gunned down by unknown suspects.To reach out to Paul, Lana had to play along at times, to get Paul to open up to her, as their initial meeting isn't really cordial, and it is of course difficult to strike up family conversation with relatives you have hardly seen all this while. But things take a turn when Paul finally wakes up to reality, and his futile investigative effort all comes crashing down for him.While there is little drastic character development, it is the subtle character representation that is key in this film. Paul represents the "ra-ra America", those who are bent on protecting the homeland at all costs, those who are inept in collecting facts (yeah, there's a dumpster diving scene which rocked) and making decisions based on faulty intelligence. Lana, on the other hand, represents the rest of the world. The compassionate world, reaching out to diversity and trying their best in understanding this difference. It is no surprise that the filmmakers showcase the different attitudes that these 2 characters exude towards a Pakistani whom they meet towards the end.Good music is peppered throughout the movie, and I always appreciate films that introduce appropriate tunes for each scene that punctuates the entire atmosphere beautifully (Think Cameron Crowe movies). And one poignant line in the film stuck to me as the film begins in LA and ends in Ground Zero, NY - if we can hear the 3000 souls asking us not to use their name in vain, as an excuse to kill more people.For those in Singapore who wish to catch this film, I don't think there is a repeat screening, so you might have to catch it on discs. And by the way, the lead actress looks like a cross between Audrey Tautou and Liv Tyler - so there.