This is already the second time I watched Wim Wenders' "Im Lauf der Zeit" or "Kings of the Road" and even if I did not hate it as much as I did during the first watch, I still find it really underwhelming and nowhere near Wenders' best. I like "Wings of Desire" and "Alice in the Cities" a lot more. This 40-year-old film (made in 1976) we have here is a film is a two-man show basically from start to finish and quite a challenge for lead actors Rüdiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler as the film runs for almost three hours. Wenders made color films before and after, but here he made the creative choice of returning to black-and-white. This is the story of a friendship between two men as they spend together a whole lot of time on the road. One of them, a mechanic who does lots of repair work in theaters, is played by Vogler, while the other (Zischler) is a man who just turned single again after the relationship with his wife ended. I did not care for these two as much as I hoped I would. I like Vogler as an actor most of the time, but here he gave off a really unlikable vibe on many occasions and this was a huge problem as it certainly was not intended. Vogler's character was not half as interesting as he should have been with his background. Admittedly, the short performance of Marquard Bohm stayed more memorable to me, even if Wenders' attempt to show things could be way worse about wife struggles feels pretty clumsy. Lisa Kreuzer has a very small role only and as she is third in the credits, it shows how much the film is really only about the two main characters. She also adds very little as a short-time love interest to Vogler's character. The struggles of the latter were also really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I personally enjoyed seeing Rudolf Schündler in here as I think he is by far the best thing about the Lümmel franchise, even if his character here is of course entirely different. As a whole, it is a film that is as slow as it gets and this is not necessarily a problem, can even be an advantage if the slowness still brings up interesting characters and elaborates profoundly on them. But I never developed interest in the duo here or even felt involved with their story and I do not think this is my fault, but the fault of writing characters that impossibly can carry this film, especially with this runtime. Still, with the whole atmosphere and setting of this road movie I am not surprised it received some awards attention, actually less than I expected. But I am very much surprised by this film's rating on IMDb as I think it is one of Wenders' weakest works from what I have seen so far and I don't think it has aged well at all. Also the parts about sexuality/masturbation add very little except cheap thrills. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
Review of Kings of the Road
