{"id":17309,"date":"2016-01-14T14:13:39","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T18:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=17309"},"modified":"2016-01-25T18:55:02","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T22:55:02","slug":"wim-wenders-the-american-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2016\/01\/14\/wim-wenders-the-american-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Wim Wenders: The American Friend<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
The American Friend<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\r\nd. Wim Wenders (1977)\r\nThe Criterion Collection Spine: #793\r\nBlu-ray Release Date: January 12, 2016\r\n\r\nScreen captures below are taken from The Criterion Collection Blu-ray disc.<\/span><\/pre>\n
An admirer of Patricia Highsmith’s novels, Wim Wenders wanted to adapt one\u00a0into a film, but when he\u00a0tried to procure the rights\u00a0he was disappointed to find that the rights to his favorites were not available. Word got around that Wenders was shopping her books, so Highsmith invited him to visit her as she was working on a new novel.\u00a0The meeting was fruitful: she offered him the rights to\u00a0the yet unpublished\u00a0Ripley’s Game<\/em>, the third of what would become five Ripley novels. Lovers of the Ripley books might be disappointed if Wender’s adaptation, which is brilliantly retitled as\u00a0The American Friend<\/em> and has Dennis Hopper as the famous American criminal, does not present the same Ripley\u00a0they are used to.\u00a0The\u00a0novels portray Tom Ripley as a chilly, amoral con-artist and killer who lives the highlife with a distinct taste for European culture. In The American Friend<\/em>,\u00a0Hopper’s Ripley is still the cruel puppeteer who derives some pleasure in putting people in awful situations, but what on earth is he doing in a Stetson walking around in the seedier parts of New York and Amhurst? Who cares!\u00a0Wenders may have been less than faithful to the character, but The American Friend<\/em> is a brilliant film interested in its own world, an ugly world\u00a0that\u00a0seethes with\u00a0anxiety and desperation, just the kind of things that feed\u00a0Hopper’s Ripley.<\/p>\n
\"The<\/p>\n
Though I just spent a long paragraph talking about Tom Ripley, The American Friend<\/em> is mostly concerned with the life he plays with, that of Jonathan Zimmermann, brilliantly performed by Bruno Ganz.<\/p>\n
The kindly Zimmermann runs a framing shop that sometimes gets him out into the art world. He’s heard of Tom Ripley, and though we don’t know exactly what he’s heard we understand he doesn’t respect Ripley; at an auction where Ripley is engaged in a forgery scheme, Ripley offer’s his hand to Zimmermann but Zimmermann refuses, simply says, “I’ve heard of you,” and then walks away.<\/p>\n
Then again, maybe Zimmermann doesn’t have anything against Ripley in particular. Ripley quickly learns that Zimmermann has been acting strange lately because he is suffering from some blood disease. Zimmermann thinks he is dying. That’s a depressing thought in an of itself, but Zimmermann is also often distracted from what’s going on around him by thoughts of his wife and young son. What will they do when he is dead? It’s possible, then, that Zimmermann wasn’t being deliberately rude; he just doesn’t remember what to do in those situations.<\/p>\n
\"The
Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Ganz’s Zimmermann is a man constantly anxious and constantly distracted. He’s soft spoken and not particularly forceful to those around him, even letting a woman deliberately underpay him for his work. He can bring himself to remind this woman of their agreement but not much more.<\/p>\n
This is the life that Ripley decides to upend, ostensibly\u00a0to pay\u00a0Zimmermann back for slighting him at the auction but also, and perhaps more so,\u00a0for a simple lark. When the French criminal Raoul Minot l tries to hire Ripley to murder a rival, Ripley refuses. But then his sick mind kicks in, and he tells Minot to try to hire Zimmermann. To entice Zimmermann, Ripley and Minot falsify his lab tests to make his death appear imminent. Seeing this as a way to care for his family after his impending death, Zimmermann fearfully agrees.<\/p>\n
\"The
Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Much of the film becomes, at this point, a portrait of Zimmermann’s rising pulse while the plot thickens around him. He is terrified of dying, he is terrified of killing, and he’d really rather just go to sleep. He’s a sickening combination of anxiety and numbness. He looks like he could drop dead at any moment for forgetting to breathe. We also wonder just how on earth this simple man will survive his job as a murderer-for-hire.<\/p>\n
\"The<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, as he monitors the situation, Ripley becomes fond of Zimmermann, and they become unlikely friends to the point Ripley confesses:<\/p>\n
Zimmermann:<\/strong> Why did you spread this rumor that\u00a0I am with one foot in the grave?<\/span><\/p>\n
Ripley:<\/strong> Remember that day we were introduced at the auction? You said, “I’ve heard of you.” You said that in a very nasty way.<\/span><\/p>\n
Zimmermann:<\/strong> That was all?<\/span><\/p>\n
Ripley:<\/strong> Isn’t that enough?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Playful and petty, Ripley has Zimmermann, now his friend, for his own amusement. Though in the book Ripley is married, he’s presented as completely alone in this film, and his glee at finding Zimmermann is disturbing, even if his admiration for Zimmermann comes from genuine heart.\u00a0By this time,\u00a0naturally, it’s too late for Zimmermann to change course. Wonderfully paced, perfectly acted, with thrilling set-pieces at the train station and on the train, the film tracks this strange pairing through\u00a0the moody world.<\/p>\n
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The Criterion Edition:<\/strong> Though not as stacked with supplements as some recent releases have been,\u00a0the\u00a0material we get\u00a0is satisfying.<\/p>\n