The Unbound Promise Of The Full Five-Hour Masterwork Until The End Of The World
Until the End of the World is a film, like the best of them, that stands outside of genre. Part sci-fi epoch, part love story, part road movie, it begins and ends with an image of the Earth’s curvature. Made by director Wim Wenders, it is the culmination of his most successful period as a filmmaker, a truth made all the more striking in that at its initial release, Until the End of the World was a failure.
Now that the world has gone womblike, it’s a perfect time to revisit Wim Wenders’s 1991 film. A globe-trotting epoch part chase, part philosophical debate, part technological recrimination. Wenders called it his “ultimate road movie.” At its time of release, critics savaged the theatrical cut and audiences stayed away.
Wenders sensed trouble with producers and cut the 4 hour and 47 minute-long version on an entirely separate negative that he paid for himself. Criterion brought out that unexpurgated director’s cut in December, coincidentally the dawn of Covid-19. It is this behemoth which brings forth the idea Wenders originally conceived of in 1977: a chase across the earth while an out of control nuclear satellite threatens to crash into the planet.
After building several successes across the 80s, Wings of Desire among them, Wenders finally had access to the kind of money he’d need to film UTEOTW. “The film was the most ambitious thing I ever did, and also probably the most…
