Until the end of the world, with the songs of Wim Wenders

A colossal worth tens of millions of dollars, a road movie shot in Italy, France, Portugal, California, Japan, China, Australia. A visionary film that anticipated today’s image-dependent society, but also a flop and one of the most controversial films of a great director’s career. And above all one of the most beautiful film soundtracks ever, with unreleased songs by REM, U2, Lou Reed, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode.
It is “Until the End of the World” by Wim Wenders, a film which in 1991 followed the masterpiece “The Sky Over Berlin”. And from today it returns to theaters in a restored version, a “directors’ cut” of almost 5 hours. An opportunity to rediscover those songs, starting from the title track “Until the end of the world” by U2 and “Fretless”, a hidden jewel of REM’s discography, remembered by Michael Stipe for Rockol.

The story of the film

Filmed in 1990, the film is set in the future, at the transition between 1999 and the new millennium. The end of the world is represented by an Indian satellite that risks crashing on Earth causing a nuclear catastrophe: the protagonists live in this limbo of waiting, until the Americans detonate it – but the radiation blocks all communications and electrical objects: screens, radios, TVs, airplanes.
In the midst of this, Wenders tells the story of Claire (Solveig Dommartin), a restless woman who chases Sam (William Hurt) around the world, who travels to capture images with a futuristic device that will allow her blind mother to see her loved ones again. All with a supporting cast featuring Eugene (Sam Neill), writer and Claire’s ex, who tells the story. A road movie that turns into a sort of warning about addiction to images: in the Australian desert Claire and Sam are no longer able to tear themselves away from their portable viewer, increasingly disconnected from reality. Until they wake up…
The film has aged not exactly well in Wenders’ dilated style and in the far from intense acting of Solveig Dommartin, Wenders’ co-screenwriter and partner at the time, who later passed away in 2007. It lacks the rarefied intensity of “Sky Over Berlin” or even recent masterpieces such as “Perfect Days”, but the underlying theme is very current, and Wenders has visionaryly anticipated today’s reality of addiction to device. “The Gospel of Mark opens by saying that at the beginning of the world there was the verb, the word. But what if the Apocalypse told us that at the end there is only the image?”, asks Sam towards the end of the film.

The soundtrack and U2

The film opens with Claire dealing with the after-effects of a Venetian party, while the televisions play a video clip of “Sax and Violins”, an unreleased song by Talking Heads. And the whole story is punctuated by scenes with great rock songs, starting with that of U2: Wenders spoke with artist friends and asked them to write unreleased songs thinking it was ’99, ten years later. U2 resumed and finished a demo they were working on for “Achtung baby”, from which Wenders took the title of the film – even if the song is about something else, about a hypothetical conversation between Jesus and Judas. In the film (which was released in theaters in September ’91) and in the soundtrack he appears in a different version from the one released a few weeks later in U2’s masterpiece. The call was answered by Lou Reed (“What’s good” became the single for “Magic and Loss” the following year), Nick Cave (“(I’ll Love You) Till The End Of The World”), Depeche Mode (“Death’s Door“): the soundtrack was released in December of that year and is one of the most beautiful ever, for the quality of the songs – even if for rights reasons “Blood of Eden” by Peter Gabriel and “Breakin’ the Rules” by Robbie Robertson were not included (later released on the respective solo albums of the period). Unfortunately the soundtrack is only partially present on the platforms today.
Wenders had already worked with Cave on “The Sky Above Berlin” and with Ry Cooder for the wonderful soundtrack of “Paris, Texas”, but here it’s another story: unreleased songs, used as narrative tools and part of the film’s identity. Wenders’ ability to attract musicians of the highest level but also to discover gems remains unique in cinema, even in the films of the following years, in which he returned to work with U2 and many other artists. An ability comparable perhaps only to that of Scorsese, another rock director, although obviously very different.

REM and “Fretless”

In the soundtrack of “Until the End of the World” there is a hidden gem from the discography of one of the greatest bands: “Fretless” by REM. In the film it plays while the protagonists move in one of the San Francisco bars at the center of the story, and it is perfect to describe the complex relationship between Sam, Claire and Eugene: “He’s got his work and she come easy/They each come around when the other is gone/Me, I think I got stuck somewhere in between”, sings Michael Stipe on a nice arpeggio of guitar and piano.
I asked REM to remember that song, and Michael Stipe sent me this message:

we all know and revere wenders and his films. when asked, we were thrilled to provide ‘fretless’ for the film. this song in particular is resonant because the tone and complexity matches the emotional arcs of ‘until the end of the world’

The song is not original, in the sense that it was not written for the film, but it is actually perfect for describing the central characters of the film. When “Until the End of the World” was released, the band had recently released “Out of Time” and were at the height of their success, and “Fretless” had been recorded during those sessions. The reason is that it is a melancholic song, which probably would have changed the tone of the album, where there was already an introspective song like “Country feedback”, which would later become a classic of the group. “”Fretless” was played live several times in concerts of that period and appeared in the 2004 “In Time” collection. When the deluxe edition for the 25th anniversary of “Out of time” was released in 2016, the tracklist remained the same, but “Fretless” was included as a bonus track in the demos. You can also find it in the “complete rarities” collection on the platforms and in a wonderful acoustic version in “Unplugged” 1991/2001: The Complete Sessions,” which the band released (physical format only) in 2014.