Wim Wender's Land of Plenty

There isn't too much to like about Wim Wenders' films over the last twenty years. There have been a few bright spots, but for the most part, Wenders' obsession with America has gotten the worst of him. In his prime, few directors since Antonioni were as adept at depicting inner monologues through silence. Wenders' characters were complicated men of few words.

Over time Wenders love affair with America somehow convinced him that the 'less is more' approach was failing. Wenders threw his greatest strength out the door and substituted it with what would become, over time and many films, his achilles heel: big ideas.The characters in Land of Plenty aren't really individual people, they are ideas. These characters represent something grander, something excruciatingly ambitious: the American conscience. Lofty goals of this sort often end up as preachy and pretentious and LOP's screenplay is just that. Shot on the cheap, on digital video, LOP feels like noble idea rushed into production without the benefit of enough revisions to weed out the heavy handedness. Films concerned with the traumatic effects of 9/11 are compelled to be both profound and reverential, the problem is profound and reverential seldom make for a worthwhile movie going experience. If there was a rating system based on the number of American flags displayed in a movie, LOP would score full points, as it is, LOP rates very low.