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OCTOBER 12, 2005 ARMOND WHITE Wim Wenders' Land of Plenty is named after a superb Leonard Cohen tune. ("For what's left of our religion/ I lift my voice to pray/ May the lights in the land of plenty/ Shine on the truth some day.") The story of a crazed, vigilant Vietnam vet (John Diehl) who is reunited with his only relative, a niece (Michelle Williams) who returns to the U.S. from Israel after 9/11, gets just about everything right about today's political and moral muddle. There are simply amazing moments such as Wenders presenting the uncle and niece's eye contact by juxtaposing one's anxious face in a car mirror with the other's beseeching visage. Wenders knows how to do spiritual noir and he makes sense of the way close relations can be torn between family and society, nation and government. An immigrant's cry, "My country is not a place, but people" resonates. Wenders even makes room for the vet to utter a defense of the war that damaged him that no thinking person can refute (and only a West German would dare). No surprise that the media has overlooked Wenders and Fellowes to celebrate George Clooney and David Cronenberg; Land of Plenty and Separate Lies challenge viewers to think and see. Volume 18, Issue 41 © 2005 New York Press http://www.nypress.com/18/41/film/ArmondWhite.cfm?in1=y Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |
