{"id":1322,"date":"2014-11-22T14:53:45","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T13:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2014-11-22T22:43:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T21:43:33","slug":"dangerous-dreams-irresponsible-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/dangerous-dreams-irresponsible-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous dreams, illicit images"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although sports-minded movie buffs might cast their votes for The Goalkeeper\u2019s Fear of the Penalty (1972) and self-respecting film critics would definitely prefer Wings of Desire (1987), my personal favorite in Wim Wenders\u2019 vast and immensely seminal oeuvre is Until the End of the World. The 1991 epic uncannily predicted our techno-frenzied twenty-first century world in which the need for face-to-face communication has been abolished by a variety of devilish\u00a0gadgets.<\/p>\n

Of course, the so-called message of a film directed by the most accomplished auteur of his generation can hardly be deciphered in a satisfactory manner, let alone reduced to a catchy phrase. It is a truism, after all, that ultimate meanings dwell in the eye of the beholder. For all it\u2019s worth, then, I perceive Until the End of the World as a statement against playing God and refuse to entertain other interpretations. Admittedly, I have only seen the two-and-a-half-hour version despised by Wenders; the director\u2019s cut which never premiered in theaters is almost twice as long.<\/p>\n

In terms of plot, the film gravitates towards a slightly deranged scientist who has devised a camera for the blind, a gadget which enables him and other characters to immerse themselves in their own dreams. Recording and watching dreams becomes a real obsession for them,\u00a0a\u00a0solipsistic activity with disastrous consequences. Tellingly, the scientist is played by Max von Sydow, the iconic actor from a number of Ingmar Bergman\u2019s films in which the existence of God is repeatedly questioned.<\/p>\n

As Wenders noted on the twentieth anniversary of his oddly neglected tour de force, \u2018the main technology in the film \u2013 to make a blind person see, or to extract images from the brain of a person \u2013 that\u2019s what scientists do\u2019 in the new century. \u2018I\u2019ve had several scientific reports of the first images drawn out of a person\u2019s brain, strictly represented by brainwaves.\u2019 Those images, he argued, looked \u2018exactly like what we\u2019d done in the film\u2019.<\/p>\n

Indeed, his cinematic invention anticipated Google Glasses by two decades and came with a complicated memory system. As for the precise look of Wendersian dreams, the album cover of the soundtrack which proved to be more popular than the film itself gives an appropriately fussy idea:\"Until_The_End_Of_The_World_album_cover_200\"I was reminded of the German cineaste\u2019s vision when I recently discovered a video\u00a0created by a \u2018filmmaker, designer and dedicated jogger\u2019 named Carl Burgess. Titled Visual Representations of Running, the 154-second video is a hallucinating interpretation of an embodied practice \u2013 hallucinating and haunting in equal measure. Is this what running is supposed to feel from within the human body? Is Carl Burgess a genius? If so, shouldn\u2019t he have channeled his\u00a0undeniable skills in less controversial directions?<\/p>\n

Verily, the outrageously brilliant video bears ominous resemblance to the mad scientist\u2019s project in Wim Wenders\u2019 film. Since the old man\u2019s hubris didn\u2019t escape retribution which, in view of the director\u2019s Christian faith, I take to be of divine origin, let\u2019s pray that the more recent dream snatcher avoids the fate of Max von Sydow\u2019s character!<\/p>\n

(Though I wouldn\u2019t recommend Carl Burgess\u2019 video to any sane person, I feel obliged to indicate at least the location of his bizarre masterpiece: http:\/\/vimeo.com\/104020394<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although sports-minded movie buffs might cast their votes for The Goalkeeper\u2019s Fear of the Penalty (1972) and self-respecting film critics would definitely prefer Wings of Desire (1987), my personal favorite in Wim Wenders\u2019 vast and immensely seminal oeuvre is Until the End of the World. The 1991 epic uncannily predicted our techno-frenzied twenty-first century world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-okategoriserade"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-lk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}