Don't Come Knocking

Wim Wenders makes extraordinary movies about ordinary people. Whether the inhabitants are important personalities or 'little people', they are always special because of their humanity.

When I did an internet movie quiz that supposedly answered the question, 'If someone made a movie about your life, who would direct it?' I kinda hoped it would be Wenders. His characters are tiny flecks on a vast landscape, made infinitely interesting by fine observation and untiring attention. Each character is a mystery unravelling.

In Don't Come Knocking, we follow the almost incomprehensible actions of a leading Hollywood actor (played by Sam Shepard) who absconds from a film set in the middle of the American desert. He is struggling to escape a lifelong persona based around drink, drugs and women, but doesn't know what he is looking for or why he feels life has passed him by. He is nudged occasionally in the right direction by his mother, and followed by a mysterious young woman carrying her mother's ashes, whose knowing smile gently holds back a reservoir of yet-to-be-explained emotion.

Wenders can never be accused of hurrying things along. His movies can be like watching paint dry - except that when the painting is finally ready to touch we may feel a masterpiece has just crystallized before our eyes. This is perhaps one of those occasions. Tim Roth as the inscrutable bond man tracking down the wayward actor is barely recognisable till half way through the film, so perfect is the characterisation. Sarah Polley as the mysterious Sky can almost make us burst into tears before we have any idea why, nor any awareness of the secret she is holding. Shepard plays Howard Spence with biopic-like conviction. Add a score by T-Bone Burnett that seems to suspend time in the desert with guitar chords that hang in the air, and framed scene upon scene that looks like a classic movie poster waiting to be discovered.

Don't Come Knocking is like one big Do Not Disturb sign on the things we most need to know and that no-one wants to tell us. It's why they're secret - and why we have to know. The film takes a very long time to answer its own puzzle but, if you can stand the pace, the result is ultimately worth it.