Wim Wenders, elder statesman of film, focuses on future
Prolific German director has been recast as a cinematic elder statesman
Wim Wenders is having a moment - and there haven't been many occasions in recent years where you could make this claim without encountering a dissenting voice.
An undisputed icon in the European art-house tradition, the German auteur was awarded an honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival last month, which also dedicated a 10-film "Homage" section to the director. Included as well in its competition section was the world premiere of Wenders' latest film, Every Thing Will Be Fine, starring James Franco, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Rachel McAdams.
Arguably his highest-profile narrative feature since the Berlin Silver Bear-winning The Million Dollar Hotel (2000), the 3D film revolves around a novelist (Franco) struggling to deal with the guilt of having caused a fatal car accident.
After briefly attending Oscar Week in Los Angeles last month for The Salt of the Earth (2014) - the Oscar-nominated documentary on Sebastião Salgado that he co-helmed with the master photographer's son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado - Wenders is now enjoying a major career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which runs until March 17.
"I think I have a pretty good notion of myself by now," the director of such classics as Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) says when we meet in Hotel Regent Berlin the morning after Every Thing Will Be Fine was shown to the public for the first time.
For a 69-year-old filmmaker who served as one of the faces of New German Cinema - the historically significant movement also represented by the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog - between the late 1960s and early 1980s, Wenders has proved to be a most adaptable practitioner, able to move with the times and experiment with new technology.
