Wim Wenders’ Most Ambitious Film

Until the End of the World by Wim Wenders was a large project. This essay discusses the slow process of the film’s creation, its distribution, its content and critical response, in order to point at failure as the question key to each of those topics. Purpose, success, resolution, ending, the end of the world – those notions appear either irrelevant or impossible in the context of this film. The research material consists mainly of reviews and director’s comments. Content analysis displays many references to classic film genres, references which, however, prove dysfunctional. An important theme of the movie is wandering. This is a recurring motif in Wenders’s work, which some interpretations derive from the identity-seeking typical of his generation. In his case, this search is often expressed by crossing state borders. Central Europe is nevertheless poorly represented in his work.