The State Theatre
Sunday, August 4, 2024

Doors: Noon
Film: 1pm

1991 | 287 min. | Color | DCP
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Cast: William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Sam Neill, Max Von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau

Until the End of the World is “the ultimate road movie,” a journey around the globe, a modern-day odyssey. In order to enable his blind wife (Jeanne Moreau) to see, Dr. Farber (Max von Sydow) invents a process that makes it possible to transmit the images recorded in the brains of sighted people directly into the visual systems of blind people. Farber’s son Sam (William Hurt) sets out on a journey around the world in order to “see” and record the various stations of his mother’s life for her. The Frenchwoman Claire (Solveig Dommartin) falls in love with him and sets out in pursuit of him. She, in turn, is followed by the author Eugene (Sam Neill), who is recording her adventure. The film was shot in 1990 and takes place in the near future, around the turn of the millennium. Frustrated with the Reader’s Digest version of his film, which was forced upon him by his distributors, Wenders created a director’s cut two years after its release: at a length of almost four hours, it lives up to his intentions and to the epic nature of the story.

-Stephen Jannise