Wim Wenders' The American Friend is a well-crafted thriller that transcends its narrative lynchpins, delivering a powerful morality tale about desperation, good, and evil. Centered around Jonathan, a craftsman who specializes in framework, The American Tale is a story centered in deception, which finds this genuinely honest, well-intentioned man fall into a darkness, consumed by a world of murder and deceit. Jonathan is a character who is under the impression that he is dying from a rare blood disease, struggling to grasp the idea that he may soon die. When Ripley, a displaced American cowboy who deals in art forgery among other things, learns of Jonathan's illness he uses its to his own advantage, introducing Jonathan to Minot, a Paris gangster. Minot has a proposal for Jonathan- become a professional hitman and in return Minot promises a large legacy for Jonathan's wife and young child. With death on the horizon, Jonathan accepts Minot's proposal, but he soon realizes getting out of this world isn't as easy as it is to get in. The American Friend is a engaging story with a very strong understanding of its characters, with Jonathan's plight being a irony soaked tragedy. Bruno Ganz is such a revelation in this film, delivering a quietly devastating performance that is truly a masterclass in nuanced acting. A character who believes he is dying, Jonathan is a man who is suffering on an existential level, with The American Friend examining his deteriorating morality as this character's desperation increases. While Jonathan throws his own morality out the window for the sake of his family, the great irony of The American Friend is that the deeper Jonathan becomes ingrained into the world of Ripley and Minot, the more distant he becomes from his wife and child. He is a character who essential transforms over the course of the film, with Wender's displaying how this dark world, the burden it places on this originally well-intenioned man, essentially destroys him in the end. The film is very well made, with a few train sequences where Jonathan carries Minot's wishes being stand outs, as Wender's delivers a brooding tension that evokes the anxiety and internal conflict of Jonathan as he wrestles with his own morality. Wim Wender's The American Friend certainly works as an engrossing thriller, but what makes it such an interesting film is how little interest the filmmaker actually shows in details of the shady dealings of Ripley and Minot, never particulary interested in defining/explaining Ripley as a character, focusing much more on how darkness slowly pierces and eventually destroys Jonathan.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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