Despite a few felicitous moments, the film is turgid, pretentious, and dramatically lifeless.
Until the End of the World(Bis ans Ende der Welt)
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Germany, France, Australia · 1991
Rated R · 4h 47m
Director Wim Wenders
Starring William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Chick Ortega, Eddy Mitchell
Genre Thriller, Drama, Science Fiction, Action
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Until The End of the World is an odyssey for the modern age. As with Homer's Odyssey, the purpose of the journey is to restore sight -- a spiritual reconciliation between an obsessed father and a deserted son. Dr. Farber, in trying to find a cure for his wife's blindness, has created a device that allows the user to send images directly to the brain, enabling the blind to see.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Caryn James
The longer it gets, the loopier it gets. [19 Jan 1992, p.13]
Wenders weaves all his thematic and narrative threads together into a coherent, philosophical whole. Even with the apocalypse, though, his view isn't despairing. A new direction, a new beginning emerges out of the ashes of the old, image-overloaded world, and with it, a sort of muted optimism.
The Seattle Times by John Hartl
Despite all of the personalized Wenders touches, it ultimately resembles many a top-heavy, star-laden, special-effects-driven production from the major-studio assembly lines.
The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman
The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. The isolated, solipsistic anger of each character, lost in their own identity loop, seemed like a perfect analogy for the conflicts in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s.
Austin Chronicle by Kathleen Maher
What starts out promisingly enough continues considerably beyond the end of the world and wears out even the most determined Wenders fan.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The movie itself, unfortunately, is not as compelling as the tempest that went into its making.
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A gorgeous paen to modern life and the modern person's thirst for freedom and truth, Until the End of the World depicts how a "leap of faith" in the modern age can lead us down a rabbit-hole of obsessions and conspiratorial thinking until we cannot extricate ourselves from the fictions that we have created and which surround us regularly. Though it is not without its flaws, whenever the tacky narration feels like its about to overstay its welcome, Wenders is wise to switch to a vivid shot of the inimitable Australian landscape or insert a song from the film's incredible soundtrack. An absolute must-watch.