Kings of The Road by Wim Wenders
“This essay by Wim Wenders really connected with me about how I’m feeling while working on this next issue.”
A feature from A Letter to Jane MagazineThis film is the story of two men, but it doesn’t take a Hollywood approach to the subject. American films about men - especially recent ones - are exercises in suppression: the men’s true relationships with women, or with each other, are displaced by story, action and the need to entertain. They leave out the real nub: why the men prefer to be together, why they get on with each other, why they don’t get on with women, or, if they do, then only as a pastime. My film is about precisely that: two men getting on together, each preferring the other’s company to that of a woman. You get to see the shortcomings of both of them, their emotional insecurity; you see them trying to be mutually supportive and to hide their faults. But with the passage of time they’re no longer bothered by these faults, and when they know each other well enough they begin discussing them. As a consequence of that, they split up. They split up because, on their journey across Germany, they’ve suddenly grown too close. It’s a story that you’re not often told in films about men. The story of the absence of women, which is at the same time the story of the longing for their presence!
