The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

Wenders’s professional feature debut explores contemporary West Germany’s wastelands, as experienced by a fading soccer goalie who’s lost interest in the game, or in following rules. Kicked out of a game, the bored goalie Josef Bloch begins a very long walk away, one that takes him on a journey across the less scenic ends of the modern world—crumbling walls, crap bars, isolated villages, interrupted only by the squawk of American rock, alcohol, a woman, a fight, and, one night, a strangling. In one hundred minutes, Wenders delivers a thesis on desolation, both cultural and personal. “Every frame haunts you for goddamn weeks” (Tony Rayns).