Wim Wenders is back big time. As in a sweeping, swooning movie billed as a romantic thriller. I can just imagine how he must have itched to shoot this one in his favourite 3D (but couldn’t get the funding). SUBMERGENCE is not akin to any previous (more innovative or art-housy) Wenders I can think of --not WINGS OF DESIRE, not PARIS, TEXAS, not EVERY THING WILL BE FINE. That of course can be a good statement about a filmmaker at 72 with 60+ films. In many ways, it is very Wenders-ian: emotional, poetic, philosophical, not afraid of grand symbolic gestures, trying to shine light into human darkness.
Add unusually scientific and political. “An utterly contemporary story, thrilling and deeply moving at the same time, spanning continents and oceans, facing two big threats to our world today: climate change and terrorism.” By the time of the #TIFF17 world premiere of SUBMERGENCE, Wim Wenders' 2016 comment on his latest feature project has taken on a whole new weight, between Barcelona and hurricane Irma.
Exploring these issues through the lens of a love story made me anxious at first, but it works (at least most of the time): It affords the viewer connection and distance, thought and emotion, and it is indeed thrilling and romantic.
Mainly set in Normandy and Djibouti, it is the story of James More (James McAvoy), a water engineer who is taken hostage in Somalia by Jihadist fighters who suspect him to be a British spy. Danielle “Danny” Flinders (Alicia Vikander) is a bio-mathematician working on a deep sea-diving project to support her theory of the origin of life on the planet. In the run-up to the film, there seems to have been no controversy over Oscar-winner Vikander taking the role of Flinders, a mixed-raced woman in the novel. The book was a best-seller, voted among The Best 10 Books of 2013 by the New York Times.
While Vikander is believable as a love interest, she is less so as a math professor, and her professional scenes seem unnecessarily sci-fi-y when they should be just sci. This was unfortunately the second not pitch-perfect casting or performance from Vikander at TIFF17, after a very disappointing EUPHORIA. James Mcavoy though is solid and enjoyable to watch in SUBMERGENCE: understated, controlled, casual, nuanced, intense, trying to stay sane in a cruel imprisonment. “Wim had me at hello, I would have peeled potatoes on set,” he joked at the premiere when asked about how he became attached to the film. Reda Kateb rejoins Wenders from last year’s THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF ARANJUEZ in a minor but well-played role.
'Water is life' takes on a whole new meaning in this movie. It opens the film, it ends the film, it connects the two lovers, it stands for hope and for a future. There is life at the bottom, literally and metaphorically. Let’s build a well and hold on to love, an ever-utopian, dreaming Wenders tells us loud and clear.
The back and forth between two major story lines and locations is intricately edited with intersecting gestures and thoughts and themes, but also takes away time from background or other relationships (like the sketched one between James and the African doctor). Of course Dany and James don't know much of each other after a three-day romance, but are still deeply attached. And Wenders often catches the potential motivational pitfalls. Just when I am starting to wonder what motivates James to work in Africa, the couple talk about his time as a soldier and have their first fight, over the West’s response to terror. One could have made more of the religion vs. science, belief vs. education dichotomies; we might all have to read the book to get an in-depth grounding.
When asked about what some viewers thought of as an open ending, an ever mischievous Wenders replied that between the book’s explicit ending and movie expectations, "I found the only way out.”
I am curious to see Fatih Akin’s IN THE FADE next and his take on misguided belief, hate, murder, and what sees us through.
by
@JuttaBrendemuhl
image: Submergence promo shot courtesy Neue Road Movies
