There's a curious symmetry to seeing a film set eight years in a future that's now eight years in the past, but the 279-minute director's cut of Wim Wenders' Continent-hopping sci-fi road movie Until the End of the World feels more like a notebook with the odd doodle in the margin rather than a clearly thought-out film, never getting to grips with any of the themes or ideas it throws up and casually abandons along the way. Words versus images (surprisingly Wenders comes down firmly on the power of the word), art versus technology, impulse versus commitment, the struggle to find meaning in the places you find yourself and people's ability to constantly start over, be it in art, science or life - none get much more than a cursory once-over as it becomes ever clearer that Wenders' destination is more geographical than thematic.

Set in a still far-off 1999, when America's plans to shoot an out of control nuclear satellite out of the sky lead to mild economic and social chaos as the possibility of a chain reaction and the end of the world looms, it's something of a shaggy dog story following Solveig Dommartin's bored party girl across four continents. Surviving a car crash, she looks for a mission in the new life she has been given and finds it in the form of William Hurt's fugitive, who steals some stolen money she's holding for Chick Ortega and Eddy Mitchell's robbers. Following him across the globe with the aid of Rudiger Vogler's private eye and followed herself by her ex and the film's narrator (Sam Neill) and Ernie Dingo's bounty hunter, several countries and a couple of aliases later she discovers he's recording images of his family for his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) with a camera that allows the blind to see that was developed by his father (Max Von Sydow), in hiding from the US government in Australia...

As long as the film is moving from city to city, Wenders is able to sustain some semblance of the illusion of forward motion, but the film stops dead in its tracks when it reaches Australia, which is a big problem. Not only is the end of the world still a long way off, but so is the end of the film - with more than two hours to go it's hard to disguise the fact that there's not much to show for all the mileage covered. If anything, it feels a bit like a long business trip to a place you've never been with people from your office only to find that your appointment's been postponed once you finally arrive, but since the hotel room's already paid for you find yourself sticking around for a day or so anyway killing time. The film does get back on track in the last half hour as the characters become addicted to their own dreams and become completely unable to cope with reality, but you can't help feeling it could have got there a lot quicker.

While Neill, Vogler and Hurt fare well enough and Von Sydow has one good scene, co-scenarist and leading lady Solveig Dommartin makes a poor focus for such a sprawling endeavour. Another in that long line of muses - Catherine Hessling, Cybill Shepherd, Sondra Locke - luring once great directors onto the rocks with their siren call of mediocrity, she's not much of an actress with little screen presence to compensate, while her English delivery doesn't do her many favours. It's telling that one of her best scenes is a (presumably) deliberately awful but surprisingly charming rendition of Thank You For the Days accompanied by piano, drums and didgeridoo that makes up with enthusiasm what it lacks in ability. Still, compared to Adelle Lutz's horrendously awkward phonetic delivery as her best friend Makiko, she's Sarah Bernhardt.

But no film with a hero called Trevor can be all bad, and for all the self-indulgence there are enough good points to keep you watching. Some of Neill's narration is rather good (possibly down to co-writer Peter Carey), there's an eclectic soundtrack that takes in Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, R.E.M., Elvis Costello and pompous soft-rockers U2 among many others, Robby Muller's cinematography is typically impressive and the film makes the outskirts of San Francisco look like a Third World shantytown. Some of the predictions were at least in the right ballpark - satnav systems, the Americans shooting a rogue satellite out of the sky and a joke about the Rolling Stones' 'last' concert - and it only gives into outright xenophobia in a horribly misconceived comic scene in a Japanese hotel. Yet the film is definitely less than the sum of its parts, with Wenders all too clearly going all Hearts of Darkness as he constantly seems to rework the slim premise into whatever latest brainwave has just struck him - with an African epilogue unfilmed, if the producers hadn't pulled the plug he'd probably still be shooting to this day. (As it is, the German DVD has another half hour of deleted scenes and outtakes and it wouldn't be entirely surprising if Wenders delivered an even longer cut some time in the future.) Still, the Bounty Bear was fun...

This film, Until the End of the World (UTTEOTW), has long been called the ultimate road movie or even the greatest road movie ever made. Sometimes when I read stuff like that I cringe and think that this film is far greater than that and calling it a road movie does it a sort of disservice. I've watched this film probably hundreds of times (hate to admit) and in every different format available and have weighed this film, measured this film and only found myself wanting to see it again.

Sure, the film spans 15 cities and 7 different countries and has more story arcs than Los Angeles has McDonalds but the more I watch the film the more I feel that this is less of a road movie and more of a biopic of the fictitious would-be scientist, Sam Faber and his over-bearing family.

I feel that UTTEOTW is a much greater contribution to modern film then most are willing to admit and could quite possibly be one of the greatest films ever made. This film has the same kind of public ground swell audience that Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Blade Runner have. All these movies preformed badly in the box office but are seen as some of best cinema that man or woman has been able to bring forward.

UTTEOTW has been seen by many to be a failure of sorts because of the immense runtime and the resolution set in Australia that is almost an entire third of the film, in all versions. It seems, historically now, that the studio execs thought that it would be inappropriate to subject any audience to five hours of film and that the American audience was too daft and wouldn't buy the whole concept, thus kicking off the mess that the film has gone through for almost twenty years now. Yes, it has been almost that long now.

The film in different edits, according to lore, has gone from a 20 hour version, that Wim Wenders had vehemently held position on for almost six months before acquiescing to releasing a `meager' 8 hour version and then later produced a 5 hour version. He was horrified when the studio forced a 151 minute version that he looks back at in complete disdain and refers to as the `Readers Digest version' and has stated that it is `unwatchable'. I don't know about the 8 and 20 hour version and which is better, because I and many others have not seen it, but I have seen the 5 hour version many times and now look at it as vastly superior (in presentation) to the theatrical release, but the theatrical release is far from unwatchable and is actually the version that the majority of the audience is familiar with and enjoy.

Wenders suffers from the same ills as Ridley Scott does, as he sees his films his way and not the way the world sees them, and that's perfectly fine. Ridley Scott doesn't like the Harrison Ford `Philip Marlowe' narration while an immense group of the fans loved it, myself included. Wenders doesn't like the theatrical release while most of the world is awed by it.

So, when the audience did see this film, it was the beginning of a new decade and Wenders, like Werner Herzog or David Lynch, had built up a core audience of supporters worldwide that appreciated his films for storytelling, the movement and the sheer reverence that seemed to manifest on screen. UTTEOTW came out at probably the very beginning of the emergence of the modern independent film movement that has now firmly taken over the industry. Even though they had budgeted $23 Million dollars for production, a lot of the funds came because of the acclaim given to Wings of Desire again with Solveig Dommartin, but the money didn't necessarily make this film the typical large-budget studio film that others were producing around the same time for the same funds when this came out. A quick search of movies released in 1991 shows an abysmal year aside from Jonathan Demme's masterpiece `Silence of the Lambs'.

This movie is undoubtedly Wenders greatest work, and I have watched every film he's put out - before and since. Sometimes I see glimpses of this film in his other works and can tell that this film's reception in the world still weighs heavily on his mind. Like Al Gore, he's traveled the globe giving lectures with his film and has his own ideas about its impact and what more can be done. It seems that some of the legal battles may never go away, specifically the ones that are associated with Warner Brothers.

Recently, a Region 2 PAL version was released into the market, and when I watched it I could tell it probably didn't have the stamp of approval from WB. The quality shows it to be almost a straight VHS transfer from a low-end computer system which puts a lot of visual noise on the screen and in the audio. Some people who have purchased this version have complained, but really I don't see anything wrong with it as it's just a full-frame DVD that will suffice for now for those looking for the 158 min on DVD.

My recommendation when it comes to versions is to purchase the 3 Disc Director's Cut set from Amazon.co.uk and just live with the fact that the first fifteen minutes of dialogue that's had with Solveig and Chico are in French with no subtitles. If you watch the film you can pretty much get the gist of what's being said anyways, Chico needs more beer, he likes the Beatles, sex and Solveig tells you how much you can buy a goat for in Ethiopia.

I had read in January of 2007 that Solveig had died of heart failure and was deeply saddened as I found her to be an incredibly unique talent and hypnotizing to see on the big screen. I would have loved to have seen her star in a few more films and even break back into the American marketplace. What a shame she's now gone, she'll be missed for sure.

I've put a list of all the different versions below, that are available and that I own, so you could get an idea of what's going on with this movie and its debacle of a distribution:

1991 VHS Tape Theatrical Release 158 mins
1991 R2 Samsung Japanese Laserdisc 179 mins
2004 PAL R2 Italian 3 Disc Set 280 mins
2004 PAL R2 UK 3 Disc Set Director's Cut 280 mins
2007 PAL R2 UK 1 Disc VHS Transfer 158 mins

Regarding the last release, I recently discovered that the difference in the run-time is due to PAL speed-up adjusting it 4%, from 158 mins to 151 mins.

For those in America interested in seeing these films but are worried about the DVD Regions / PAL difference. Don't fret because there are some very easy ways to set your DVD player to Region 0 which will make your player Region free and you can watch all movies from around the world. Videohelp dot com has most players remote codes which will help you easily make the adjustment. I've changed all my players this way and have been happy ever since.

Many people hope for a sequel to their favorite film. What we have here, instead, is a wide opening-up, almost a complete retelling, of a story that fans of this film already know and love.

I'm only through the first disc, but I can say, the color, sharpness, and over-all quality of the transfer is stunning, even when converted from PAL back to NTSC on the $20-after-rebate RCA DRC2479N (occasional scenes show some jiggling in the detail, but otherwise, this transfer is so sharp it makes me wonder why anyone bothered to invent artifact-filled HDTV).

Slightly annoying is the lack of English subtitles on the French-language scenes. So far the main French scene was familiar enough from the US-theatrical version, but for new viewers who don't speak French, this is a slight but serious disadvantage.

YES, I would still like to see the shorter version on DVD, mainly to introduce the film to friends (and I believe it was released this way in Austrailia recently), but for myself, I am very very glad that I decided to invest in this overflowing feast of cinema.

Great locations the world over evoked with sensitivity and style, hip people, love, friendship, connecting with the mother, confronting the father, references to technology, thoughts on dreams, movies and literature, superb soundtrack. The greatest movie ever!

The 158 minute US Video version features some fine moments, but you cannot help but feel that this is a "reader's digest" version, as the director Wim Wenders calls it in the extras of this expanded, nearly 5 hour cut of his epic. Homer is explicitly alluded to in both versions of the film and certainly the length of the director's cut broadens and deepens the epic feel. However, much of the new narration by Sam Neill is rather poorly written and overly descriptive. In the 158 minute version it was rather more understated and effective. The 3 part version of the director's cut is perhaps best expanded in the first and third discs, while the second disc features the least amount of change and possibly the most disappointing of changes: the use of Peter Gabriel's "Blood of Eden" (strangely missing from the soundtrack CD and only available on long out of print CD single import) during William Hurt and Solveig Dommartin's flight in Australia. Most of the new footage involves Dommartin, whose less than effective performance shows even more warts in the expanded version. There's not much new for William Hurt, whose equally ineffective performance hurts no more than it does in the 158 minute version. There's a rather silly addition of an impromptu musical band in disc three, as well, that was best left on the cutting room floor. Watching all discs at once is best avoided as the films drags a bit in the third act, despite an excellent performance by the always outstanding Max Von Sydow. There's more of the supportive cast here, as well, which is a benefit: notably Sam Neill and Rudiger Vogler as the ubiquitous Philip Winter. Despite Wenders' sloppy extended version, the film remains one of the more interesting foreign films from the early 90s, certainly has one of the best soundtracks in movie history. All in all, I give it 4 out of 5 stars given its comfortable mix of genres: road movie, detective movie, sci-fi movie, romantic comedy, good performances from Jeanne Moreau, Sydow, Neill and Vogler, and some memorable footage of the underfilmed Australian outback. For the novice, I would still suggest the 158 minute version which, despite its "reader's digest" feel, which in a number of spots seems somewhat superior to this "director's cut" . They could have included the 158 minute version on this disc as well, as it is, as stated above, still only available on an out of print VHS from 1992.