Wim Wenders
La terra dell'abbondanza

Not everyone knows that Ernst Wilhelm intended to follow in his father's footsteps (a renowned German doctor) by enrolling in the Faculty of Medicine, only to change his mind and switch to Philosophy before interrupting his studies to pursue a film career and become known worldwide as Wim Wenders, but that's another story...

Last night, while looking for something to watch among the latest films by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen and finding nothing on streaming platforms that I hadn't seen already, I turned to the indestructible WW and after skipping a couple of titles not available on free platforms, I stumbled upon this unexpected film titled “Land of Plenty” shot by him at almost sixty years of age.

The ingredients are numerous: the return journey to the States after a life spent in North Africa by a twenty-something unconventional girl with a strong sense of humanity, the search for her only remaining relative (her maternal uncle) to deliver her mother's last letter on her deathbed, he is a former USA soldier who fought in Vietnam, now dedicated to spotting potential terrorists of Middle Eastern appearance, the senseless murder of a peaceful homeless Pakistani by two privileged kids under the influence of various drugs, the scenarios of a “land of plenty” where abundance is primarily widespread poverty curbed only by volunteer organizations that no one wants to talk about, least of all America itself which tends to sweep the dust under the carpet, then there's Ground Zero, there's the West Bank live on an Ibook, and the vast landscapes of that America we’ve seen before in WW’s films like in “Paris Texas” two decades earlier.

As a side dish, there's a soundtrack worthy of the stories told by Wenders which includes, at the end, even two tracks by Leonard Cohen, namely “The Letters” and in fact “The Land Of Plenty” from which the film takes its title.

What else to add except that the themes are more than relevant (seeing what still happens between the aggressive Israeli State and the rest of the Islamic world) even though almost twenty years have passed since the film's release in theaters, and nothing except that I’m glad I watched it (albeit not in cinema).