This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I just wanted to express how much I enjoyed this film. I watched the almost 5 hour directors cut of this film for the first time on August 2017. I enjoyed the film so much that I lost track of time and was totally surprised that 280 min. had passed (4 hrs 40 min). I had never heard of Director Wim Wenders and I must say that I am now a fan. I am looking forward to viewing more of his films! For those of you that have read bad reviews for this film, ignore them. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. Great Music, Characters, Acting and Story. Definitely one of my new favorites!

This is my favourite film but it will not be to everyone's taste. The mix of whimsy and melancholy will puzzle some, who may ask how seriously they are meant to take it? Its length and occasional problems with continuity will put others off. Added to this, what is intended to be the central romantic relationship never quite convinces. But the film as a whole is redeemed by its sheer ambition and, most importantly, the humanity and the generosity of its vision.It's 1999 - that's seven years into the future - and the world is threatened by an orbiting satellite that carries a powerful nuclear device. Meanwhile, Henry Farber has stolen a camera of his own invention from the American government, not trusting the uses to which they might put it. He sends his son, Sam, around the world, collecting images with this device. These images are to be electronically projected into the brain of Henry's blind wife, Edith. On his travels, Sam picks up a stalker, Claire Tourneur, who is on the rebound from a broken relationship with the writer, Gene FitzPatrick. Sam collects images for his mother. Claire chases Sam. Gene chases Claire. The investigator, Philip Winter, who appeared in Wenders' previous film, 'Alice in the Cities,' chases all of them. Eventually, everyone ends up at Henry's lab in the Australian outback, the satellite having exploded and, with all communication cut off, no-one being sure whether the world is still alive. Here, the precious images are projected into Edith's head and, in the single most moving scene in any film (IMHO), she sees a picture of her San Francisco dwelling daughter Elsa, for the first time, but with no idea whether Elsa herself is still alive.And there's more to it than that. Much more.As Sam, William Hurt delivers a convincing and sympathetic performance throughout. Sam Neill is likable as Gene. Rudiger Vogler as Winter is stratospherically cool. Max von Sydow, as Henry, is intensely flawed yet utterly sympathetic and, appearing on screen only about half way through, comes close to making the second half of the movie his own. Jeanne Moreau as Edith is, at some points, heartbreakingly moving. Special mention must go to Solveig Dommartin, who played Claire and who conceived some of the story. It was clearly a labour of love for her - for example, finding that they couldn't film in China, she snuck in with a video camera and taped a few lo-fi sequences single-handed. The film's lack of immediate success must have upset her deeply, and her premature death has robbed her of the chance to witness the recognition that this lovely, warm-hearted story is, little by little, beginning to get, now that the four-hour version is available on DVD. Not to everyone's taste then, but those of us who like it, love it.

Let me make this short and straight. Just avoid it, I mean it. I was somehow dragged into watching this and this was a real torture. How can you rate this as Sci-Fi. Even 50 years ago people could do much better effects. Don't tell me this is a style thing. If so, then call this as crap fiction, not science fiction. There was no story and the whole movie so boring. Even if you are forced to watch it, avoid the long version by all means for your own mental health. I don't troll movies but this one really deserves a good kick so that people that doesn't have the slightest clue about technology does not attempt to produce yet another garbage like this.

Wim Wenders over 5 hour globetrecking cyberpunk epic, is intended to be the ultimate road movie. It plays out like a miniseries, about a woman who just separated from her writer boyfriend(played by Sam Niel who serves as narrator), and crashes cars with wounded bank-robbers, they offer to give her some of the money if she will transport the cash the rest of the way to Paris for them. She agrees and uses her money to finance the trip that ensues for the rest of the movie. She immediately after meets William Hurt, a mysterious hitchhiker she becomes fascinated with. He is on the lamb, but from who, and why? After he ditches her and steals a hefty sum she becomes obsessed with finding him.All the while a rouge Indian nuclear satellite hovers above the Earth, haywire and endangering a possible nuclear Apocalypse if it accidentally detonates. The world is closer to ending than it has ever been, which means its just a story on the news in the background, most people try to ignore.The first segment, in this three part film, is their chase cross country and continent, "A Dance Around The World", as the book about their lives is latter called.They begin in Italy, and go on to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Bejing, Tokyo, San Francisco, and finally the Australlian Outback, our heroin Miriam discovers, that Hurt is wanted for a stolen piece of Government property, a device that records the experience of seeing and translates the information as images. He is recording the most beautiful places in the world, for his blind mother. He is the son of Max Von Sydow, the inventor of the device. Their cat and mouse game becomes a whirlwind romance of constant movement and escape.By the third segment they reach Sydow's underground lab in Australlia, where they also discover that the device cannot only record seeing for the blind, but can record dreams if left on during sleep. The aboriginals who run the lab with Sydow refuse to work on his dream machine. Slowly but believably the rest of the staff, becomes obsessed with staring into the recordings of their dreams, "It got to the point where they dreamed of their dreams...and fell ever deeper into the black well of Narcissus .".There are car crashes, planes losing power midlight, and one gorgeous locale after another. Like "Alphaville" and "The Fall" this film is completely indebted to its beautiful sights, that it finds and photographs. At five hours long, you can imagine it meanders a good deal. And it does, but for a film so dedicated to the pure spectacle and profound importance and danger of "seeing things", I didn't mind.Future content wise, there is a clear opposition between the dual natures of the machine, helping the blind to see the world, and allowing the sightful to intrude upon their private internal world, whose appeal is magnetic and addictive. Tecnhology is a double edged sword, amazing but not without its serious ethical and philosophical dilemmas (which is the more real world the one within or without? etc), this movie doesn't delve into it conversation wise, it's lets everything play out, at five hours it gives you the credit that you can work it out for yourself.It's really just a beautiful film to watch, that's much sweeter and gentler than most sci-fi, and more fascinating too because it doesn't shove its implications down your throat.Wim Wenders, got people like The Talking Heads, Can, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, U2, Nick Cave, and many many more, to make original songs for the soundtrack about the new millennium. While many of the songs are very good, most are awkwardly placed as well. No doubt Wenders was really excited about all the music and just wanted to use everything.Definitely flawed, but a richly excessive and eccentric experiments and time capsule. Despite its hefty run time, I thought Wenders was sensitive, to the changing dynamics of the future world, it's not dystopian and it's not Star Trek/Fifth Element Space Opera either, it occupies, a space, where simple good or bad, are no longer really relevant to discussion.At one point when everyone assumes the world has ended Sam Niel's character is playing in a small band with several Aboriginal neural scientists, a few french-bank robbers, a British bounty hunter, and some random strays who wandered into the Australian compound fearful of nuclear fallout, and they play a music that sounds like Australlian Blue Grass; Didgeridoo's and pianos, harmonica's, and trumpets, blending together to create something singular and new. He notes to himself, "This entire trip has not been about helping a blind woman to see, or gazing into ourselves. But this adventure, the satellite, the machine, the crash, it all occurred, so we could be here, at this moment, to create this music which would have never otherwise existed, right at the crest of the end of the world".Few sci-fi films are dedicated to power of music(that the characters play), words(that Sam Neil records for his novel), and images(of coming war, of the beauty of the world, and the contours of our own mind/dream/souls,etc). In Alphaville when the computer asks Lemmy Caution, "What moves the night?", Caution responds, point blank, "Poetry". Wim Wenders updates, upgrades, and extends this concept for the new millennium. Though I cant remember too much of what was said, I'm still humming along days later, with some pretty pictures circulating in my head like post cards from an alternate universe.It's a bittersweet, love, travelogue, adventure story, for the New Millennium; "Where In The Wolrd Is Carmen San Diego?", as written by William Gibson on a sentimental day.