Alice in the Cities

Ethan Colburn4.0

Nothing reminds me how random life really is quite like a Wim Wenders movie. Every time I finish one of his films I am reminded how precious every moment is and how much free will one person has. It’s a movie about stumbling into people who change the trajectory of your life.I don’t believe in fate (and I can safely assume Wenders doesn’t as well) but I think there is something equally incredible about the beauty in randomness. There is something profound about the fact that I didn’t have to meet my girlfriend, or be born into this body, or be surrounded by the incredible people I know. I didn’t have to be born at all. His movies often involve characters that are forced together randomly and find they really do love each other, platonically in this case or romantically. I also feel I don’t have a set path ahead of me, which is what I’ve really been down about these past few weeks. But this movie made me feel more at peace with that. The journey is long and winding and has no set beginning or end.Life is made up of little moments that make us who we are. In his movies the road side stops and ice cream cones are as important as the note that changes the trajectory of the story.While fate can be a great scriptwriting tool, I think the inverse can be as well when used properly. It is not as commonly used, yet Wenders has mastered the ability to tell a gripping story yet seem like he’s coming up with it on the spot.

yazz! *･ﾟ✧4.0

“that’s why you keep taking photos, they’re something you can hold on to, more evidence that it was you who saw things.”

heather jane kwiatkowski4.0

A melancholic poem on the barren nature and alienation within Western and European culture. This movie is as warm as it is cold and it's probably one of the calmest movies I can think of. It's almost like going through a time machine... it's steeped in culture yet somehow removes itself from it, a dwindling poem about being lost, desensitized by the homogenization of said culture, and the simple story of finding something worth smiling about in another soul. Philip and Alice's arduous relationship is fascinatingly endearing, flipping back and forth between opposites. It's comical, actually. It reminds me of my own trials to be a parental type figure to my own sister, which is to be expected with this movie, but I couldn't help it. It gets to me.