Part concert film, part biography and all warm-hearted tribute, Pina profiles Bausch's work and influence both through the eyes of her colleagues and against the backdrop of the world that inspired her. Wenders frames this legacy vividly -- from a stage lined with soil to a somnambulant stroll through the park to a vaguely hallucinatory trip on a hanging commuter train -- while the 3-D technology entitles the dances themselves to the space and dimension that eluded the director over decades of previous attempts to collaborate with Bausch. The results have moved festivalgoers from Berlin to New York and Los Angeles, and they finally reach U.S. theaters this week in limited release.
Wenders spoke with Movieline about Pina, Pina, pushing the limits of 3-D, the 20th anniversary of his great, globetrotting Until the End of the World, and how to enjoy the reviled Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration LuLu.
Pina has caught on quite dramatically since premiering earlier this year in Berlin. What's your take on the reaction -- and having reestablished Pina's legacy onscreen?
I think the reaction by audiences by audiences not only in Europe and America -- but also by critics -- is really a reaction to the beauty of Pina's work. A lot of people have caught on to the film in very emotional ways. I think they are surprised and at the same time happy that there was something they may have missed there, but now they can at least see it right in front of their eyes.
Obviously you and Pina go back quite a ways, but how and when did this kind of collaboration first arise?
You have to go back a quarter of a century. We first started to talk about it in the mid-'80s, and then we just toyed with the idea. We really took it more seriously in the '90s, and it was Pina who pushed for it. As soon as she did, I realized, "We've got to do this." I had to sit down and write out a concept and actually write out how I would do this -- how I would film the glory of Pina's dance. I realized I didn't have, in my craft at least, what it took to make it happen. I felt I didn't have the adequate tools, and the more I thought about it, the less I was convinced I could do justice to Pina's art with my possibilities as a filmmaker. It was the invisible wall between what Pina did onstage and what I could put on the screen. I was honest to Pina and told her, and she was patient with me. She said, "Eventually you will find it. There's got to be a way." And that was a running gag between us for more than 10 years. "When are you ready, Wim?" And I said, "Not yet, Pina." Until I found a way -- and that was not in myself, not in my soul or in my heart. I found out all of the sudden that there was an addition to my craft that I had not known yet. And that was called 3-D.
What was your first reaction to the resurgence of 3-D and its improved technology, particularly as a filmmaker?
I was sitting in a theater putting on these glasses for the very first time... I mean, I'd done it 40 years ago for some Hitchcock movie, but that was long ago. I even remember in the '90s, I saw a Cirque du Soleil film in 3-D. But the technology wasn't really available. So 3-D was altogether forgotten, and it had never really been an option for us when we thought how to do it. And all of the sudden I'm sitting there with these glasses on, not thinking of much, really. I saw a film called U2 3D -- a very early 3-D film, one of the first on the market. I thought it would be fun to watch a 3-D concert. But from the first shot on, I was mesmerized. I almost didn't see or hear the film anymore; I just saw the possibilities. And the possibilities were the answer to 20 years of questioning ourselves how to film dance. There it was, because for the first time we could enter the very kingdom of dance -- and that was space. It hit me that that had been the invisible wall -- that we had never had access to that kingdom.
How did you select the pieces that were most compatible with 3-D? How did you determine they were compatible?
We selected the pieces together -- Pina Bausch and I. Their compatibility with 3-D was striking. In a strange way, Pina's dance and 3-D were made for each other from the beginning. It was like a match made in heaven; it was beautiful, this affinity for each other. From the beginning, I knew they were made for each other, and they would bring out the best in each other. Say, for instance, Café Müller and Le Sacre du Printemps -- the first ones that we chose. Café Müller is a stage full of these chairs and these dancer running through these chairs, and the space itself is so beautifully staggered with these objects -- these chairs -- you couldn't have thought of it in a more ingenious way for a 3-D shoot. And Vollmond (Full Moon), the last piece we shot -- with this water onstage, and all this water coming down and being splashed toward you? It was like it couldn't have been choreographed more nicely for 3-D.
Beyond the dances, though, some of the scenery and logistics themselves are stunning. What went into deciding to shoot on a train or in a traffic intersection?
When we started to shoot that was all wishful thinking, because we started in 2009 -- the infancy of 3-D. There was not much equipment available. The first leg of the shoot we shot on the stage with this huge monster -- this huge dinosaur -- of a crane to carry the equipment. We would not have been able to go into the hanging train or the city; the equipment was not light enough. And to shoot with Steadicam was completely wishful thinking on the first leg. You have to remember this was months before Avatar even came out. You couldn't just rent any equipment. It wasn't available. And then my stereographer realized how badly I wanted to get out into the city, and he singlehandedly created the first Steadicam rig that was available -- at least in Europe -- and with the very first generation of cameras that were mobile, we went out and shot out and about in the city. That was the next spring.
There just seem to be so many onlookers out in the city. Were people curious?
I swear to God, nobody seemed to know what we were doing there. And Wuppertal is an industrial, working-class city. They don't care about some film crew standing on the corner. We were left alone as much as Pina was left alone for 40 years. That's what enabled her to work in that little city and work with that continuity. She was able to work unobserved.
How much of directing itself is in fact choreography? Say, between actors, or with the camera, or with actors and the camera against space?
In the case of Pina, the choreography already existed, and I had to respect it. And I wanted to respect it as much as possible. My choreography was the choreography of the camera -- a sort of reverse-angle choreography: I had to make the cameras sort of react and dance along to Pina's choreographer. So I was a choreographer of the camera. I probably was such a choreographer after my initial meeting with Pina, which was in the mid-'80s. I instantly got high doses of Pina; I was so blown away with everything that was available that I saw a retrospective of six in a row, and that was, of course, not quite an overdose, but definitely mighty doses of Pina Bausch that really changed my life. And the first movie I did afterwards was Wings of Desire, which by any standard was the most choreographed film I ever made. There was a circus, a trapeze artist... It was a very choreographed movie.
Two decades on, what are your thoughts on the reception and legacy of Until the End of the World?
Well, it is still by far the most ambitious thing I ever did. I look at it like that. It's a work that's very dear to me, though I must that I was forced by the studios worldwide and my co-producers at the time to shorten it down to something that was like a Reader's Digest of the movie. The film that's in distribution ever since 1991 is a far cry away from what was actually shot. The only film that represents that is my director's cut, which is twice as long -- which is five hours. The film has strange insights into the future. If you look at the people running around looking at their little monitors in front of them all the time, that's what you see in the streets today everywhere -- that sort of addiction to the computer image. You'll find that in many young people today. It's a real disease. And the main technology in the film -- to make a blind person see, or to extract images from the brain of a person -- that's what scientists do. It's the very same technology today, in 2011. I've had several scientific reports of the first images drawn out of a person's brain, strictly represented by brainwaves. And they gave imagery that looked exactly like what we'd done in the film. So it's funny how science fiction eventually becomes reality.
Do you feel like that film is underappreciated, or that there's a way you might try to revive that director's cut somehow -- particularly considering what you just mentioned?
I hope that one day that the long version comes out on Blu-ray. I'm not really into reviving the Reader's Digest because of the way I feel about it. I had to do it myself. If I hadn't cut it down to two and a half hours myself, somebody else would have done that. I thought I'd rather kill my own baby then let somebody else slaughter it. I never saw that short version after that. I didn't even go to any screenings when the film was released. I didn't want to see it. It was too painful. So I made the director's cut two years later, but it was hard to impose it because the distributors had the rights to the other one, and there was no director's cut foreseen in the contract. So I could only really release it in the two territories I controlled, which at the time was Germany and Italy. But I hope eventually the film will see the light of day in other territories -- at least on Blu-ray. I don't think a film of five hours realistically has any chance to have theatrical distribution.
There's a beautiful print of it at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They have the only print of mine, and I'm very grateful that they have it. It's there, and anybody who would want to screen it could get it from the Academy. But realistically a film like this doesn't have any chance to be seen on the screen. But I hope one day for a Blu-ray.
Probably its most enduring legacy is its soundtrack. I've got it represented on almost every playlist of mine. How did that come together?
It sounds like it was 10 times more successful than the movie. If as many people bought the soundtrack had watched the movie, I would have been very happy!
It really is one of the best ever.
It's a beautiful soundtrack. It was made in sort of an adventurous way, because all these bands that I was listening to when I was making the movie, a lot of them were my friends. So that was the music I carried with me during the making of this science-fiction film. And when I was editing it, I figured that was contemporary music. I mean, U2 and R.E.M. and Lou Reed and all the stuff that was in the film that I was looking to, I figured I can't put it into the film if the film takes place in the year 2000. I'd better ask these guys if they could project themselves 10 years into the future and write a song that, like the movie itself, made an effort to look into the future. I asked... Let me think. I asked 18 bands to consider a proposition of writing a song that could represent their music 10 years from then, really thinking that only half of them would respond if I was lucky. But they all responded except two, and I got 16 tracks -- one more beautiful than the other. That was one of the heartbreaking things about the Reader's Digest version: Some of these beautiful songs, in that version, only appear for 10 seconds. So another reason to make the full version of the film was to let the music blossom and finally show what the intention was with all that fantastic music.
It's funny. And there are some other things like that, where bands actually did something that had something to do with what they were making in 2000. It was adventurous, and I'm eternally grateful to all these guys to take my proposition seriously and really project themselves. Even U2's title track, "Until the End of the World" -- if they released that today, people would say, "Wow." Even today it's a little futuristic.
Have you heard Lou Reed's new collaboration with Metallica?
Oh, yes. I'm listening to it every day! I rented a different car, because I realized... [Laughs] I'm here in L.A., and I'm staying in this hotel, and I don't have a sound system. So I needed a car with a good stereo system to allow me to play LuLu loud, because it's ridiculous to hear LuLu in a regular car. So I rented a much more expensive car so that it would have a good sound system so I could actually listen to LuLu loud. So I'm driving around the city with LuLu very loud! It's fantastic! I love it.
Really?
It is a funky thing. I've never heard Lou Reed sing like this! And I've known him for so long, and I love The Velvet Underground. But Lou Reed was never belting out like that. It's like he finally was carried by another force that let him sing like this. And of course there is a little retro thing to the sound of Metallica. I mean, I like them, but they haven't really changed their sound. But the combination is still really utterly fascinating.
Portions of this interview were published previously, in slightly different form, on Movieline.
[Top photo of Wim Wenders: Getty Images]
Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter.
Follow Movieline on Twitter.