Wim Wenders second feature adapted from a novel by Peter Handke.
I remember seeing this film on TV when I was a teenager and being intrigued by the title which was then translated as “The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty”, a less accurate translation perhaps but a better proposition than the current one. I couldn’t really recall the details other than vague impressions of mystery and strangeness so it was great to watch this restored version. I had no idea that it had been unavailable for a long time due to music licensing issues.
The story has a lot in common with Albert Camus “The Outsider”, an existential mystery about why someone would commit a terrible act of violence with no obvious reason or motivation. The “goalkeeper” of the title, Josef Bloch, murders a woman after spending a night in a strange city after being sent off from the football match he is part of. All this happens within the first 20 minutes or so. There is no build up to the event that we have come to expect from mainstream movies, no clues that make sense in hindsight, no signalling of danger or suspense from the cinematography or soundtrack. It just happens.
The rest of the film follows the protagonist on a journey back to his home town in rural Germany. He is not obviously on the run after realising his crime but instead appears to be meandering on a whim, following a memory that has been triggered by his actions. Wenders shows us Bloch reading a newspaper over breakfast at the inn he is staying at. The headline is all about the murder but Bloch ignores it to focus on the story of a missing local boy he has overheard. Does Bloch identify with this missing boy somehow? That is the beauty of this film. Wenders plays everything very straight, dropping in little scenes that have no apparent significance but are full of potential metaphor and interpretation.
Bloch is a blank canvas, wonderfully played by Arthur Brauss who reminded me of a young Daniel Craig, around the time he was playing a similarly archetypal role in Our Friends in the North. This blankness serves to foreground the surrounding context and environs in order for Wenders to make some interesting observations about modernity. The interweaving roads, railways and rivers surrounding static lives with the promise of journeys, imported American music and consumer products spilling out from the jukeboxes and retail counters of rural German villages and towns.
This is a film to be watched several times if only to respond to the pull it exerts on the imagination and to wonder what that image meant in your own mind and that of the director. And it is beautiful to look at. Even more so once you adjust to the relative lack of story and action and embrace its mood.