Wim Wenders, the revered German director who has two major premieres at Cannes this year, has spoken of his “disappointment” at the dominance of mainstream remakes and “repetitive” film franchises.
“It makes me nauseous,” said Wenders, now 77, who is best-known for dramas Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987), as well as music documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999).
“I feel all the imagination has now gone only into ‘How do I vary it?’, and not ‘How do I come up with something new?’ For me, this is not storytelling. Doing a remake is not storytelling. It is like repeating a story that has been told and my only desire is to find out how to tell a story. And then forget about it.”
Wenders’ own films might appear resistant to remake on account of their visual and aesthetic singularity. But the director regrets this has not always been enough of a deterrent: “They did remake Wings of Desire, as City of Angels. But they used plot as their main driving force yet Wings of Desire is as devoid of plot as it could possibly be. The little plot that was in it, they made that the driving force.”
Wenders’ latest feature, Perfect Days, about a soulful Japanese toilet cleaner, was shot over 17 days in Tokyo and premieres in Cannes next Thursday. If it goes down well with the jury, he could be in line for his second Palme d’Or, nearly 40 years after triumphing with Paris, Texas. Already screened is his atmospheric documentary about the German painter Anselm Kiefer, which uses 3D photography to recreate the power of Kiefer’s monumental and often disturbing works.
For Wenders, 3D is an undervalued resource – one most famously deployed by the director in his musical documentary about German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch.
“I have tried several times to show the poetic possibilities of storytelling in 3D,” he said, “and how it massively increases the possibilities of a film-maker’s tools; how you can be more in somebody’s world than ever before.
“I encourage students and young film-makers to use it, but for some reason they are all afraid of it. And they are still more afraid of the distributors, or cinema owners, because these people are used to 3D as just action material or directed towards children. Anyone who seriously programmes movies now thinks they can’t use this stuff, because it will destroy their relations with their audience. So it has this bad reputation. It becomes harder and harder.”
The difficult legacy of war is also a clear bond between Wenders and the painter at the centre of his documentary. Both men were born in 1945 and grew up amid the devastation left by the second world war.
“Anselm and I used our common past, and the war, to very different ends. Anselm really worked on his, really got to the bottom of it and really struggled with it,” said Wenders. “Myself, I just wanted out. I left Germany. I was aware of the fact all the grownups were not looking back and that there was something wrong they were all trying to make disappear. But I did not confront it as much as Anselm.”
Kiefer has been attacked for his use of Nazi icons as part of his art, largely prompted by his long-standing interest in the writing of the poet Paul Celan. Wenders believes these attacks were misplaced: “I knew all the feelings and I knew what flak he ran into with his first actions.”
Wenders said Cannes is much changed since 1984, when he took its top prize. “Everyone here is not so cinema-oriented any more.
“Now there’s a lot of people who love the business of movies. And the business must not be the primary focus, although they do go along with each other. Business is driving it all today. Series, franchises, remakes - or ‘recipes’ for films. It disappoints me, the success of recipe-made movies.”
