voidprime Posted January 29, 2003 Share Posted January 29, 2003 I have liked this movie since I first rented it many years ago. It takes place in 1999 about a woman who seems to be drifting through life and wandering europe from party to party. She somehow gets involved in a bank robbery and is now on the run. She hooks up with an inventor (William Hurt) who has invented a device that can record images and dreams. He is on the CIA who want the device. The guy is doing it so his blind mother can see these images. The guy falls in love with the woman and also another guy she has been involved with (played by Sam Neil) is trying to find her. Among all of these, there is a threat from a nuclear satellite that is in a decaying orbit that may bring the end of civillization or something. This movie does focus a little on people's fears that as it nears 2000, the end of the world may be near. The movie eventually ends up in Australia where a little mysticism is mixed in to boot. The movie is directed by Wim Wenders. It is an interesting movie, but I don't know how Millenniumistic this movie is. Have a better one. Be Seeing You, David Blackwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voidprime Posted January 29, 2003 Author Share Posted January 29, 2003 Oh yeah, the version I saw was almost 3 hours. There is a longer version which is five hours long. here is a site that is dedicated to the movie and exploring it's themes. Looks interesting. https://www.panix.com/~archii/uteotw Have a better one. Be Seeing You, David Blackwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voidprime Posted January 30, 2003 Author Share Posted January 30, 2003 More info. Supposedly teh five hour version of movie is being cleaned up and restored for a DVD release, but there are rights issues to take care of which might be delaying it. I hear one of Wim Wenders' other movies "End of Violence" of material cut out to make a 2 hour running time. It is available on DVD, so hopefully a longer director's version will be available one of these days. Be Seeing You, David Blackwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 30, 2003 Share Posted January 30, 2003 It is important to note that this film was released in 1991, so it was set 8 or 9 years in the future, at that time. It is also important to note that something "being millenniumistic," does not necessarily mean that it reminicent of the show itself, though this is certainly part of what I loosely refer to as "millenniumisticism." Rather, it is something that perhaps deals with similar subject matter or themes of the show. Perhaps, just something that is completely disimilar to the show, but deals with some kind of apocalypse. Or maybe it has a quality of the show, like the relentlessly and unsparingly disturbing nature of the MLM. It could be something post apocalyptic. It might be something that deals with the nature of evil in some way, or forces beyond explanation unlying things. Basically, millenniumisticism or whether something is "millenniumistic enough," means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Now, back to the film... I remember both enjoying this film, and getting lost in it at times. In some way, it seemed to make sense that it was so long, in order to really cover the scope of it. But the length of it also seemed to drag on at times. I also recall that at the time I rented this (which is when it was first released to video in the early 90s), I was in an extreme mode of really believing that "it was all comming down." I had created and developed my own vision of an environmental/social-econonmic-cultural apocalypse filled with police states, militias, survialism, human created biological plagues, acid rain, global warming, etc... you get the picture. But let me tell you I was all into it! And I was convinced it was "all going down" in the next 10-15 years. I truly didn't believe that it would happen precisely around the turning of the millennium, because I observed then (as I do now) that the calendar is a completely arbitrary and contrived device. Well, when I rented this film, and started to get into it, something was different about the way the film suggested or hinted it would all end. It almost had a kind of amused tone about it. And I recall a vague feeling that the film was sort suggesting there was a certain peace or serenity that could be had by just surrendering to the eventual inevitability of it all, and that somehow by doing that, you could be free, and in the meantime, just live your life. This didn't exactly jive with my very real fears and anxieties of what I saw or imagined was comming. All I could see was a brutal world filled with either survivalists ready to serve you up for dinner, or friends willing to serve you up to "the state" and it's "interviewers"(ie. trained interrogators/torturers), for shelter or food to eat. And any other number of brutal prospects for the future, my future. But, there was just something about the "acceptance" that sort of eminated from the film that I could never forget. Long after I had forgotten the specifics of the story and characters, I remembered this aspect of the film. I have come a long way since then in my thinking and intuition since then. And my observations and experience of life have changed in many ways, some gradual and others drastic. However, I can still recall the sense or feeling that I experienced when I watched that film. It was an almost disturbing peacefulness. And though I have experienced similar things since then, the experience I had during this film will always be unique. Until the end of the world, Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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