For director Wim Wenders, life is film. It permeates every aspect of his being, becoming the medium that best reflects his conscious and unconscious connections to the world. He has worked in all phases of it: fiction and fact, documentary and drama. He has even gone so far as to befriend famous names from the art form’s past, hoping said links will channel a greater understanding of how film can be manipulated and managed, all to expose some of the universe’s deepest, darkest secrets. Perhaps this is why his works meet with more indifference than popularity. This is not a director out to entertain. This is a man attempting to merge with the infinite via the enigma of cinema.
This is clear after watching the eight offerings presented as part of Anchor Bay’s eight-disc DVD career overview, The Wim Wenders Collection. The second in a series focusing on the iconoclastic moviemaker, it’s a compendium made up of three works of fiction (The Scarlet Letter, Wrong Move, and The American Friend) as well as five freehand “celluloid journals” (Lightning Over Water, Room 666, Tokyo-Ga, A Trick of the Light and Notebooks on Cities and Clothes).