It starts with a map, doesn’t it? A fold-out, creased-to-death map that smells faintly of coffee rings and dashed hopes. Wim Wenders’ Road Trilogy — Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976) — is less a celebration of the open road than a confession to it. These are films that rub shoulders with the ghosts of Jack Kerouac and Werner Herzog, though in Wenders’ hands, the road doesn’t sing. It mutters, stumbles, and occasionally spits in your face.
Alice in the Cities: A Polaroid in Purgatory
The trilogy kicks off with Alice in the Cities, a film that feels like waking up hungover on a stranger’s couch, clutching someone else’s memories. Philip Winter, the writer-turned-wandering-Polaroid-snapper, is a man who’s misplaced himself. He picks up a camera, as if snapping pictures of motels and gas stations will stitch him back together. Enter Alice, a precocious child dumped into his reluctant care.
The road they travel isn’t some mythical artery of freedom; it’s a conveyor belt of anonymous towns and sterile highways. Wenders paints the landscape not as some beacon of promise but as an endless shrug of asphalt and concrete. The film doesn’t resolve so much as it evaporates, like the last drops of whiskey in the bottom of the glass you swore you’d nurse.
Wrong Move: The Sour Note in the Symphony
Then there’s Wrong Move, a title that’s less a hint and more a disclaimer. Wilhelm, a would-be writer and certified nobody, embarks on a journey that’s less about finding himself and more about avoiding anything resembling accountability. His companions are a grab bag of oddballs: an actress who quotes Goethe as if it’s foreplay, a mute acrobat whose presence feels like a dare, and a poet who is equal parts clown and prophet.
This film takes the European road movie tradition and smashes it against the rocks of German introspection. It’s a travelogue of inertia, where every step forward feels like three steps back into the muck of Wilhelm’s own self-importance. Wenders turns the road into a stage, the scenery as hollow and performative as Wilhelm’s half-baked aspirations. By the end, you’re left wondering if the road is even real or just a cruel hallucination conjured by boredom and bad weather.
Kings of the Road: The Long, Slow Burn
And then there’s Kings of the Road, the heavyweight champion of Wenders’ existential boxing match. Here, the road stretches like a lazy cat across the German borderlands, a liminal space where time gets lost between cigarette drags. Bruno, a projectionist who fixes broken-down cinema equipment, and Robert, a man who drives his car into a river for lack of better ideas, form an uneasy alliance.
They drift from town to town, not so much searching for meaning as avoiding its sharp edges. The film is slow, deliberate, like the measured pacing of a drunk trying to convince you he’s sober. Cinemas crumble, friendships teeter on the edge of silence, and the road unfurls endlessly, a gray ribbon of apathy.
The Trilogy as Bar Fight
If Wenders’ Road Trilogy were a bar brawl, it would go something like this:
Philip from Alice throws the first punch, a lazy swing born of sleep deprivation and misplaced conviction. Wilhelm from Wrong Move leaps in, quoting Nietzsche and flailing like a poet who’s never thrown a punch in his life. And then Bruno and Robert from Kings step in, nursing beers and watching the chaos unfold like it’s an experimental short film.
The road itself doesn’t intervene. It’s the bartender, disinterested and wiping down counters, muttering, “You’ll sort yourselves out or you won’t.”
Wenders’ Legacy: Driving in Circles
Wenders doesn’t romanticize the road. He deconstructs it, dismantling the American myth of freedom and replacing it with something uniquely German: a road that leads not outward but inward. These films aren’t about escape; they’re about being cornered by your own existential hangover.
In the end, the trilogy leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere, clutching a map that leads to places you’re not sure you want to go. And maybe that’s the point: the road doesn’t care where you’re going. It just keeps going.
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