Photojournalist Philip meets German woman Lisa at an airport in the United States, and inadvertently becomes the temporary "guardian" of Lisa's daughter Alice. Lisa did not pick up her daughter as agreed, so Philip had to take Alice through the German city, looking for the grandmother's house in her memory. Cinematic time and space are structured in segment after segment, from the United States to the Netherlands to Germany, connected by various means of transportation, such as cars, planes, ships, buses, light rails, trains, etc. Through the genre of road films, the film conveys an existential idea in the state where the protagonist "roams the city" and finally has a destination.
1. The Existential Myth: Wandering, Photography, and Television
"Roaming" alone is the norm for Philip, both professionally and personally. He often drove aimlessly, from gas station to gas station, and even dreamed that he was driving when he was in a hotel. Such a state of being unable to stop, constantly searching for something on the road, but not knowing what it is, is a state of being caught in an existential crisis . When Philip confided his troubles to a female friend and tried to ask for sex to comfort him temporarily, the woman pointed out that Philip lost his connection with the world because he lost his self-identity, and his non-stop taking pictures was a kind of The act of looking for evidence of existence.
The camera, as a tool representing reason and science, seems to be unmistakably realistic. Pick up the camera, press the shutter, and record a moment, an object is the signature action of Philip. For him, photography is indeed a means of leaving evidence of existence, a means of fighting against nothingness and meaninglessness. At the beginning of the film, Philip sat under a trestle and took six or seven similar photos of the sea. He wanted to see if the image on the photo was the same as reality. Interestingly, this Polaroid-like photographic paper is blank until it is developed. Images emerge from the void, meanings are constructed out of meaninglessness. Such a deeply paradoxical existence makes photography unable to truly soothe Philip's existential anxiety.
Moreover, images can also be used and lied. In modern society, "water is everywhere, but not a drop to drink". Various powerful media tools, especially the ubiquitous TV (screen), bombard people with various "concepts" and "values" that are being sold. Philip hates TV. He has a special notebook for the absurdities of television footage. He also knocked down a TV in a hotel that had a weak signal and was chattering. Television provides fantasy for escapist, vulnerable, lonely people who tend to indulge themselves in images when vulnerable. While Alice was left in Philip's care by Lisa, she was alone in the coin-operated television in the waiting room. Philip's initial state was lying alone on a hotel bed, listening to TV to fall asleep.
After meeting Alice, Philip's travel seems to have a destination, which is the grandmother's house in Alice's memory. However, the memory is not reliable, and the first search was unsuccessful. The second look for clues to rely on is a photo of the house. Although the house in the photo looked exactly like the real one, things changed and my grandmother moved out of the house two years ago. Photos also don't seem to be reliable. In the narrative delay after delay, Philip and Alice develop a real relationship. Philip was also able to temporarily escape from pure emptiness and experience meaning beyond himself. The film begins with a nameless plane flying in the void, and ends with a train passing through the green hills. The destination of the plane is not known, while the destination of the train is where Alice's grandmother and mother are. The purposelessness of the former and the purpose of the latter make people feel the warmth conveyed by the film. Romain Rolland said in "Michelangelo": There is only one true heroism in the world, and that is to love life after knowing the truth of life. This may also be the message Wenders wants to convey.
2. Road films and their narratives
"Alice in the City" is a road film with the characteristics of the author's film, with a slow rhythm, elegant style, long-term meaning, deep and unique music, and a touching power that penetrates into the human heart.
From a narrative point of view, the film uses a loose and fragmented way to structure the film, weakening the plot conflict, and constructing the entire film's time and space in one journey after another, during which cars, planes, ships, buses, light rail, Trains and other means of transportation are connected, and the performances of the characters emphasize the breath of life. There is no period at the end, I have been looking for it, and it has never been reached is the state of the character from beginning to end. The film ends with Philip and Alice on the train to their destination, with an open ending, without giving the final so-called reunion scene. Another example is the interlude of Charlie Baker's concert, which is a part of the whole journey, but it gets more space in Charlie Baker's close-up shots and audience shots. This is not only related to the rock elements in it, it fits the hippie shape and character of the protagonist, and it also eases the rhythm of the film.
In addition, the film rarely uses traditional montage methods to create a psychological tension between the film and the audience, so that the film narrative is casual and casual. For example, when Philip drove around the United States alone, he used several transition effects that faded into darkness. Philip's perspective in the car (close-up shot), fading transition, followed by heavy rain hitting the windshield of the car (close-up shot), fading transition, Philip driving at night (panoramic shot), and a love movie on TV (close-up shot) ), fade out transitions. The continuous use of such a transition effect exposes the existence of editing, interrupts the audience's immersive viewing psychology, produces an alienation effect, and conducts rational examination, which is a kind of "destructive" narrative.
Many places in photography are taken from the viewpoint of means of transportation. The camera becomes the eye of the audience and builds a documentary space. For example, the driving viewpoint of the sky train in Ubertal brings a freshness to the ordinary viewpoint. Visual experience.
The addition of comedy clips adds to the fun. For example, when Alice realizes that her mother has abandoned her and hid in the toilet of the airport and weeps, Philip reads the German city names one by one outside the toilet door so that Alice remembers the city where her grandmother lives. After getting constant negative answers, the conversations that confirmed Ubertal several times were hilarious. Another example is the clip of the two people in the photo, from one person laughing, one person indifferent to two people grinning, comically expressing the gradual deepening of their emotions.
Wenders added a European poetic feeling to "Alice in the City", expressing an existential myth by showing the dual wandering of the protagonist's body and spirit, as well as a movie world full of poetry and nothingness. At the same time, he expresses his preference for "travel" rather than "arrival" in the narrative, creating a new image in the moving space of the film.
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