It took me two days to watch but this time I actually am going to finish it... that makes it sound like Kings of the Road, is a difficult film to sit through and it's the opposite; this is melancholic black and white Blues-soaked bliss, one of the coolest and most unlikely epics ever made about a protector repairman and his sad but curious traveling companion. It's fitting that this was largely inspired by photographs as you feel like you are walking into a carefully but free-floatingly curated series of them (or like a meditative version of what Buster Keaton does in Sherlock Jr).
But for all of how Wenders and his editor and Muller on camera craft the time to stretch at points, Vogler and Zischler never make us forget that these are two men, these "Kings" as it were, who can be sad do become emotional and don't bottle things up completely - after all, one of these is a loner who never met his father (died in the war) and the other had a collapse of his marriage and has an incredibly fraught relationship with his own dad, though they may end up shedding tears on their own - and these small towns don't add necessarily but do emphasize what little there is to do with the time that they have... except for a little while longer the movies are there. Until they're gone too.
In other words it is very interesting to think that most of this movie was improvised and that must have been a welcome challenge for the actors in order to chart where they would be with these guys along this journey if it wasn't already written out for them. Along with Wenders, They managed to give these men such a rich internal life even though it doesn't seem like they're doing too much and that's always tricky to pull off in a movie.
There aren't the kinds of usual stakes that you get in movies here as everything's internal, it's it's not like they have to go and fix these projectors because X will happen if why doesn't happen; Kings of the Road makes distinctly, subtly and dramatic and compelling what it means to be alone with oneself or to walk out into a field or among some sheep or to be alone in a place watching a movie - or, as it comes to pass in the last half hour as two men get drunk and frank about who the other is, how to move on and be OK. Or, of course, what it means to be suddenly entertaining a group of kids on the fly because some piece of tech isn't working.
It may work more on vibes than on a traditional structure but it still works like gangbusters. I could have watched another hour of this, though it ends at exactly the right time: the journey isn't really over (that one theater maybe but who knows even there), rather this is just where we are leaving them.
But for all of how Wenders and his editor and Muller on camera craft the time to stretch at points, Vogler and Zischler never make us forget that these are two men, these "Kings" as it were, who can be sad do become emotional and don't bottle things up completely - after all, one of these is a loner who never met his father (died in the war) and the other had a collapse of his marriage and has an incredibly fraught relationship with his own dad, though they may end up shedding tears on their own - and these small towns don't add necessarily but do emphasize what little there is to do with the time that they have... except for a little while longer the movies are there. Until they're gone too.
In other words it is very interesting to think that most of this movie was improvised and that must have been a welcome challenge for the actors in order to chart where they would be with these guys along this journey if it wasn't already written out for them. Along with Wenders, They managed to give these men such a rich internal life even though it doesn't seem like they're doing too much and that's always tricky to pull off in a movie.
There aren't the kinds of usual stakes that you get in movies here as everything's internal, it's it's not like they have to go and fix these projectors because X will happen if why doesn't happen; Kings of the Road makes distinctly, subtly and dramatic and compelling what it means to be alone with oneself or to walk out into a field or among some sheep or to be alone in a place watching a movie - or, as it comes to pass in the last half hour as two men get drunk and frank about who the other is, how to move on and be OK. Or, of course, what it means to be suddenly entertaining a group of kids on the fly because some piece of tech isn't working.
It may work more on vibes than on a traditional structure but it still works like gangbusters. I could have watched another hour of this, though it ends at exactly the right time: the journey isn't really over (that one theater maybe but who knows even there), rather this is just where we are leaving them.