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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
"Land of Plenty": Wounded people in a screwed-up country -- and guess what? It's ours!
At least on a theoretical level, it's obnoxious to rant and rave about some film that 90 percent of you, or more, won't get a chance to see unless and until someone puts it out on DVD. But as noted above, most of the movies chewed upon in this space never get shown outside New York and L.A. anyway. So what makes Wim Wenders' "Land of Plenty" special? Well, it's apparently getting no U.S. distribution at all, beyond a one-week engagement at the IFC Center in New York's Greenwich Village. (It's listed as an IFC Films release, and God love the company for that -- but it also isn't listed anywhere on the IFC Web site.)
Again, so what? Lots of films, even if made by formerly prestigious directors, can't find an audience or make a nickel. But in this case we've got a heartbreaking, visionary drama, shot on the fly on a frantic two-week schedule in downtown Los Angeles with almost no budget, that is simultaneously Wenders' best work in years and the most compelling cinematic response to the 9/11 era and its ambiguities that I've seen so far. "Land of Plenty" was shot on digital video, of course, but has been spectacularly blown up to wide-screen film and is as visually memorable as any of Wenders' classics. Yet unless you live in Manhattan -- and feel like going to the movies some night next week -- you'll never get to see it.
Is this, to use the most overused word in our language, "ironic"? No. What it is instead is a sad commentary on the overarching stupidity and cowardice of virtually everybody and everything. Apparently the buzz coming out of the Venice Film Festival was that "Land of Plenty" was some kind of shrill anti-American screed -- although I can't find any evidence that anybody who actually saw it said that -- and the film was rendered pretty much untouchable.
Wenders himself has been accused of talking out of both sides of his mouth. At a Venice press conference he insisted that "'Land of Plenty' is not in any way an anti-American film," but later told an Italian newspaper, "Well, what do you want? Bush has convinced everyone that those who don't agree with him are anti-American." As the ignominious fate of this film so far suggests, the fact of the matter is that even liberal Americans who don't agree with Bush on anything are hesitant to align themselves too closely with an aging German filmmaker in horn-rimmed glasses, who by dint of being a) foreign, and b) intellectual, has apparently forfeited any right to have opinions about America.
If we lived in a world where it was possible to skip the dumbass Manichaean politics and talk about art as if it potentially expressed nuance and subtlety, I would tell you that "Land of Plenty" is a haunting film about loss, fear, faith and loneliness, with America as its highly symbolic frame. Michelle Williams (of "Dawson's Creek") plays Lana, the daughter of Christian missionaries, who is back in the United States after an extended stay in the West Bank. She ends up at a homeless mission on the exceptionally mean streets of downtown L.A., where some of America's poorest and most desperate people cling to survival in the shadow of those sleek, anonymous skyscrapers. She's partly there as the guest of the pastor (Wendell Pierce), an old family friend, but mostly to find her uncle Paul (John Diehl), a deranged Vietnam vet who's roaming the city in a decrepit Dodge van outfitted with jury-rigged surveillance equipment.
Traumatized by the notion that bands of Islamic terrorists armed with improvised weapons are eating away at the national fabric, and convinced that only he can stop them, Paul does indeed appear as a farcical figure, at least at first. Pursuing random Middle Eastern-looking people in a van that won't reliably start, fueled by booze, pills, coffee and a nonstop soundtrack of right-wing talk radio, and dictating taped memos of his activities to a nonexistent audience, he's a caricature of American paranoia. But in Diehl's compassionate portrayal, he's also a damaged and vulnerable man completely true to an internal moral code; he fervently believes in a country and a flag that seem to have forsaken him.
As Lana and Paul, despite their opposing political views, tentatively reach out for each other, "Land of Plenty" finds its tender inner self. Both narrate their activities to entities unseen -- Lana prays aloud, glowing from within like a suburban Joan of Arc, and Wenders' depiction of religious faith is entirely uncynical -- and both are moved by genuine idealism. They eventually come together on a strange odyssey to Trona, Calif., a borax-mining town on the edge of Death Valley and one of those godforsaken American landscapes Wenders has always loved. If Wenders goes shamelessly for the heart here, including a letter from Lana's dead mother, a vodka-swilling Pakistani immigrant named Joe, and even a cross-country road trip to Ground Zero, he's earned it. By the final scene, I was weeping copiously.
If anything, the lack of money and the topical subject matter (Wenders turned to "Land of Plenty" when the forthcoming "Don't Come Knocking," starring Sam Shepard, was delayed) have forced the director to shed the sluggish, sentimental malaise that has plagued his later career. I haven't watched any Wenders films since the great "Wings of Desire" without some groaning and eye-rolling, but if "Land of Plenty" isn't always elegant, it has the inexpressible aura of mystery and wonder that exemplifies his best work. Fans will feel echoes of both "Paris, Texas" and "The State of Things" here. Like those movies, this one is less an angry critique than a sad meditation on the American dream, something Wim Wenders understands well and has never been able to resist.
"Land of Plenty" opens Oct. 12 at the IFC Center in New York.
