''Until the End of the World'' (german: Bis ans Ende der Welt; french: Jusqu'au bout du monde) is a 1991
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
adventure
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film directed by German filmmaker
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer. He is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among many honors, he has received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Docum ...
. Set at the turn of the millennium in the shadow of a world-changing catastrophe, the film follows a man and woman, played by
William Hurt
William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
...
and
Solveig Dommartin
Solveig Dommartin (16 May 1961 – 11 January 2007) was a French actress.
Her acting career began in the theatre with Compagnie Timothee Laine and with the Theater Labor Warschau. She had her first experiences with film as an assistant of Jacque ...
, as they are pursued across the globe, in a plot involving a device that can record visual experiences and visualize dreams. An initial draft of the screenplay was written by American filmmaker
Michael Almereyda
Michael Almereyda (born April 7, 1960) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer.
Early work
Almereyda studied art history at Harvard but dropped out after three years to pursue filmmaking. He acquired a Hollywood agent on ...
, but the final screenplay is credited to Wenders and
Peter Carey, from a story by Wenders and Dommartin. Wenders, whose career had been distinguished by his exploration of the
road movie
A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home on a road trip, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives. Road movies often depict travel in the hinterlands, with the films exploring the theme of alienatio ...
, intended this as the ultimate example of the genre.
The film has been released in several editions, ranging in length from 158 to 287 minutes.
Plot
Act 1
In 1999, panic ensues when an orbiting Indian nuclear satellite begins to spiral toward Earth. Claire Tourneur, who has been traveling around Europe trying, unsuccessfully, to distract herself after discovering that her boyfriend slept with her best friend, is unconcerned by the impending nuclear disaster, though her sleep has been troubled by a recurring nightmare. When she gets stuck in a
traffic jam
Traffic congestion is a condition in transport that is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. Traffic congestion on urban road networks has increased substantially since the 1950s. When traffic de ...
in the south of France after it is projected as a possible impact site, she decides to take a side road. She gets into an accident with a pair of surprisingly friendly bank robbers, who enlist her to carry their stolen cash to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, in exchange for a cut of the loot. Along the way, she meets a man who introduces himself as Trevor McPhee. He is being followed by an armed man named Burt, so Claire agrees to let Trevor travel to Paris with her. After reaching the house of her estranged lover, Eugene, Claire discovers that Trevor stole some of the stolen money while she slept.
Claire crosses paths with Burt and finds out that he is going to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. She makes the trip as well and hires missing-persons detective Phillip Winter to help her locate Trevor. Using his computer, he learns that Trevor has a bounty on his head for stealing
opal
Opal is a hydrated amorphous form of silica (SiO2·''n''H2O); its water content may range from 3 to 21% by weight, but is usually between 6 and 10%. Due to its amorphous property, it is classified as a mineraloid, unlike crystalline forms ...
from a mining syndicate in Australia, and access to Trevor's passport and financial information allows him to determine the man has just boarded a flight to
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
. When Claire and Winter catch up with Trevor, Winter handcuffs Trevor to Claire, but she voluntarily goes along with Trevor when he runs away. They go to a hotel, where Winter finds them having sex, though Trevor is able to handcuff both Winter and Claire to the bed and escape with more of Claire's money.
Still after the bounty, Winter takes Claire with him to
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, where they meet up with Eugene, who Claire has asked to bring her more money. A local bounty hunter with a more advanced computer than Winter has helps them discover that Trevor is actually Sam Farber, who is wanted by the U.S. government for industrial espionage and has a significantly larger bounty on his head than Trevor McPhee does. Winter says he is quitting the job and going home, and Eugene buys a tracking computer to help Claire, who sees Burt again and learns that Sam is wanted for stealing a camera he had helped develop at a lab in
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was estab ...
.
When Sam buys a ticket to
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
on the
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR; , , ) connects European Russia to the Russian Far East. Spanning a length of over , it is the longest railway line in the world. It runs from the city of Moscow in the west to the city of Vladivostok in the ea ...
, the computer alerts Claire and she leaves Eugene while she thinks he is sleeping. Sam evades Claire, and she ends up traveling through China alone for months. She finally calls Eugene, who tells her to go to
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
and meets her there. They go to the
capsule hotel
Capsule hotel ( ja, カプセルホテル, kapuseru hoteru), also known in the Western world as a pod hotel, is a type of hotel developed in Japan that features many small bed-sized rooms known as capsules. Capsule hotels provide cheap, basic o ...
where Sam is supposed to be staying, only to find a tied-up Winter and get shot at by various bounty hunters and international government agents who have been tipped off by the bounty hunter they consulted in Moscow. Claire is able to escape and happens upon Sam, who is rapidly losing his eyesight, at a
pachinko
is a mechanical game originating in Japan that is used as an arcade game, and much more frequently for gambling. Pachinko fills a niche in Japanese gambling comparable to that of the slot machine in the West as a form of low-stakes, low-st ...
parlor. She buys them train tickets to a random mountain inn, where the kindly innkeepers provide herbs that heal Sam's eyes. Sam reveals to Claire that the prototype camera he stole was invented by his father, Henry, and is a device that, by recording brain impulses of the photographer for later transfer, takes pictures blind people can see. Though the recording process is hard on his eyes, he has been traveling around the world making recordings of places and people that are important to his mother, Edith, who is blind, so she can see them.
The next stop on Sam's itinerary is
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. He and Claire get robbed by a used car salesman shortly after arriving, so Claire calls Chico, one of the French bank robbers, for help, and he brings more money. Sam cannot get the camera to work when he is trying to make a recording of his sister and niece, so Claire takes over. The final recording done, Sam, Claire, and Chico board a small boat to Australia, where Sam's parents are.
Act 2
Eugene and Winter, who teamed up and went to
Coober Pedy
Coober Pedy () is a town in northern South Australia, north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. Coober Pedy is ...
, Australia, to wait for Claire and Sam after losing track of them in Tokyo, pick up the trail when Claire uses her credit card to place a video call nearby. When Eugene sees Sam in town, he punches Sam and they have a brief fight before they are arrested. While Winter tries to bail them out, Burt arrives looking for Sam and the camera, but Chico is able to subdue him. The next day, Sam only takes Claire with him when he takes off to fly to the compound where his parents are hiding and his father has built a secret lab, but the others are able to follow thanks to a secret tracking device that is still on the bag Chico gave to Claire when she first transported the money to Paris.
While Claire and Sam are in the air, the satellite is shot down by the U.S. government, and the resulting
NEMP effect wipes the memories of and interferes with the functioning of unshielded electronics. The engine of his plane stops, so Sam has to execute an emergency landing. He and Claire walk across the desert until they are found by Sam's friend David, who has Eugene, Winter, and Chico in the bed of his hand-cranked diesel-powered truck. David takes everyone to Sam's father's lab, which is sheltered in a massive cave. Burt eventually arrives and everyone settles in to wait and see whether communications with the outside world will be restored. Eugene, who was writing a novel about Claire and her adventures before it was erased from his computer by the NEMP, begins rewriting it on an antique typewriter.
The process Henry developed requires the person who recorded the images to watch them while being monitored in the lab before they can be transmitted to someone else's brain. Sam, who has a strained relationship with his father, attempts to do this immediately after arriving, but he fails because he is too tired, which leads to an argument with Henry. Claire tries the experiment with her recording of Sam's sister with phenomenal success, and Sam later succeeds with his recordings. Although Edith is at first exhilarated to be able to "see" again, the ugly, pixellated images she receives contribute to her growing despondency. On
New Year's Eve
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, on 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to ...
, the same evening the group have intercepted a mundane radio broadcast that indicates human civilization has not ended, she "just let
go" and passes away quietly.
After Edith's burial, Winter, Chico, and Burt leave the compound to go home. Henry, hoping to win a
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
, begins working on how to use his technology to record human dreams, but the
Aborigines who have been assisting him disagree with this and abandon him. He continues by experimenting on himself, Sam, and Claire, who eventually become addicted to viewing their dreams on portable video screens. Eugene finds a catatonic Claire and takes her away from the lab, driving her into painful withdrawal when he refuses to replace the batteries for her screen. He finishes his novel, in which he writes her as being healthy and happy, and gives it to her, using the "truth of the words" to cure her of the "disease of images". Meanwhile, Sam wanders away from the lab and is ultimately cured by David and an Aboriginal ritual, and Henry is taken by the CIA while lying in the lab's dream-recording chair.
Eugene and Claire break up for good, but remain friends. Henry later dies in 2001, with Sam visiting his grave. While in San Francisco, Sam sees his wife (who has since remarried) and son from a distance, realizing that he has lost them forever. On Claire's 30th birthday, Eugene's book comes out and he, Winter, and the French bank robbers call Claire, who is in the middle of a six-month stint as an ecological observer on a space station, to sing her "Happy Birthday".
Cast
*
Solveig Dommartin
Solveig Dommartin (16 May 1961 – 11 January 2007) was a French actress.
Her acting career began in the theatre with Compagnie Timothee Laine and with the Theater Labor Warschau. She had her first experiences with film as an assistant of Jacque ...
as Claire Tourneur
* Chick Ortega as Chico Rémy
*
Eddy Mitchell
Claude Moine (; born 3 July 1942), known professionally as Eddy Mitchell, is a French singer and actor. He began his career in the late 1950s, with the group Les Chaussettes Noires (The Black Socks). He took the name ''Eddy'' from the American ...
as Raymond Monnet
*
William Hurt
William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
...
as Sam Farber, alias Trevor McPhee
*
Adelle Lutz
Adelle Lutz (born November 13, 1948) is an American artist, designer and actress, most known for work using unconventional materials and strategies to explore clothing as a communicative medium.Koda, Harold. "View: ReView, Introduction," ''Adelle ...
as Makiko
*
Ernie Dingo
Ernie is a masculine given name, frequently a short form (hypocorism) of Ernest, Ernald, Ernesto, or Verner. It may refer to:
People
* Ernie Accorsi (born 1941), American football executive
* Ernie Adams (disambiguation)
* Ernie Afaganis (born ...
as Burt
*
Sam Neill
Sir Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill (born 14 September 1947) is a New Zealand actor. Neill's near-50 year career has included leading roles in both dramas and blockbusters. Considered an "international leading man", he has been regarded as one o ...
as Eugene Fitzpatrick
*
Rüdiger Vogler
Rüdiger Vogler (born 14 May 1942 in Warthausen, near Biberach an der Riß) is a German film and stage actor.
Biography
Rüdiger Vogler attended acting school in Heidelberg from 1963 to 1965. Later he played for six years at "''Theater am Turm' ...
as Philip Winter
* Elena Smirnova as Krasikova
*
Kuniko Miyake
was a Japanese actress. She appeared in nearly 200 films between 1934 and 1991.
Career
After graduating from Kuki High School, Miyake joined the Shochiku film studios in 1934 and made her film debut the same year with ''Yume no sasayaki''. She ...
as Mrs. Mori
*
Chishū Ryū
was a Japanese actor who, in a career lasting 65 years, appeared in over 160 films and about 70 television productions.
Early life
Ryū was born in Tamamizu Village, Tamana County, a rural area of Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu, the most south ...
as Mr. Mori
*
Allen Garfield
Allen Garfield (born Allen Goorwitz; November 22, 1939 – April 7, 2020) was an American film and television actor.
Early life
Garfield was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a Jewish family, the son of Alice (née Lavroff) and Philip Goorwitz. H ...
as Used-Car Dealer
*
Lois Chiles
Lois Cleveland Chiles (born April 15, 1947)[Profile]
entertainment.msn.com; accessed April 9, 2016. ...
as Elsa Farber
*
David Gulpilil
David Dhalatnghu Gulpilil (1 July 1953 – 29 November 2021), known professionally as David Gulpilil and posthumously (at his family's request, to avoid naming the dead) as David Dalaithngu for three days, was an Indigenous Australian actor ...
as David
*
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau (; 23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Mo ...
as Edith Farber
*
Jimmy Little as Peter
*
Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow ( , ; born Carl Adolf von Sydow; 10 April 1929 – 8 March 2020) was a Swedish-French actor. He had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television ...
as Henry Farber
Production
Wenders began working on the film as early as late 1977, when, during his first visit to Australia, it struck him that his surroundings would be the perfect setting for a science fiction film. In addition to fleshing out the complex plot, preproduction also involved extensive still photography. It was not until Wenders found commercial success with ''
Paris, Texas
Paris is a city and county seat of Lamar County, Texas, United States. Located in Northeast Texas at the western edge of the Piney Woods, the population of the city was 24,171 in 2020.
History
Present-day Lamar County was part of Red River Co ...
'' and ''
Wings of Desire
''Wings of Desire'' (, ; ) is a 1987 romantic fantasy film written by Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger, and directed by Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its ...
'', however, that he was able to secure funding for the project.
With a budget of around $22 million ($3.7 million of which came from he Australian Film Finance Corporation), which was more than he had spent on all of his previous films combined, Wenders set off on an ambitious production. Principal photography lasted 22 weeks and spanned 11 countries. Wenders, who had a long-standing fascination with the
Australian Outback
The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...
, shot a substantial amount of the film in and around
Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Ali ...
, Australia.
The imagery in the dream sequences were achieved with early
high-definition video
High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines (No ...
. Wenders and technicians at
NHK
, also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestr ...
(the only facility which could play back HD video at the time) worked for six weeks on these sequences, intentionally distorting the imagery to create strange visual effects. They often recorded a fast-forwarded version of the image, then played it back at normal speed.
Graeme Revell
Graeme Revell (born 23 October 1955) is a New Zealand musician and composer. He came to prominence in the 1980s as the leader of the industrial/electronic group SPK. Since the 1990s he has worked primarily as a film score composer.
Some of ...
composed the theme and other music for the film. For additional music, Wenders commissioned original songs from a number of his favorite recording artists, asking them to anticipate the kind of music they would be making a decade later, when the film was set. His desire to use all of the pieces he received contributed to his decision to make the film as long as it turned out to be.
Reception
The truncated version of ''Until the End of the World'' that received a theatrical release was poorly received, being both a critical and commercial failure. In the United States, the film was released by Warner Bros. in December 1991 on 4 screens.
The total U.S. box office gross was just under $830,000.
In January 1992, reviewing the theatrical version of the film,
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the film 2 stars out of 4, describing it as lacking the "narrative urgency" required to sustain interest in the story, and wrote that it "plays like a film that was photographed before it was written, and edited before it was completed". He went on to say that a documentary about the globe-trekking production would likely have been more interesting than the film itself.
Later critics – some responding to Wenders' director's cut – were more favorable toward it. On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
the film has an 88% approval rating based on 17 reviews.
Versions
The initial cut of the film was, reportedly, 20 hours long.
Several shortened versions of the film have been commercially distributed or publicly screened. Wenders was contractually obligated by his backers to deliver a standard feature-length film, so he edited it down to the 158- and 179-minute American and European cuts, which he refers to as the "''
Reader's Digest
''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...
''" versions of the film. Meanwhile, he and his editor Peter Przygodda secretly made a complete copy of the film negatives for themselves at their own expense, and over the next year they worked on a 5-hour version of the film, which they then screened at events over the next decade. A version similar to the one shown at these screenings was released at one point as a 280-minute trilogy of films.
There is also a 239-minute letter-boxed and subtitled laserdisc release from Japan, and there are several unauthorized fan edits that combine portions of the aforementioned releases.
A 4K digital restoration from the original Super 35mm camera negative of the 287-minute director's cut was commissioned by the Wim Wenders Foundation in 2014. The restoration, which was supervised by the director and his wife Donata, was undertaken by
ARRI
The Arri Group () is a German manufacturer of motion picture film equipment. Based in Munich, the company was founded in 1917. It produces professional motion picture cameras, lenses, lighting and post-production equipment. Hermann Simon menti ...
Film & TV Services Berlin, with the support of the
CNC
Numerical control (also computer numerical control, and commonly called CNC) is the automated control of machining tools (such as drills, lathes, mills, grinders, routers and 3D printers) by means of a computer. A CNC machine processes a p ...
. This version was screened for the first time in the U.S. at several art house theaters in the fall of 2015 as part of a retrospective tour of Wenders' filmography by
Janus Films
Janus Films is an American film distribution company. The distributor is credited with introducing numerous films, now considered masterpieces of world cinema, to American audiences, including the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergei Eisenstein ...
. It was in two parts, with an intermission at 2 hours, 11 minutes, and debuted on television in the U.S. on
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasti ...
in July 2017.
In September 2019,
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
announced a special-edition Blu-ray and DVD of the 4K restoration of the 287-minute director's cut of the film, which was released on 10 December 2019.
Soundtrack
''Until The End of the World: Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack'' was released on 10 December 1991, and includes the following tracks:
# "Opening Title" –
Graeme Revell
Graeme Revell (born 23 October 1955) is a New Zealand musician and composer. He came to prominence in the 1980s as the leader of the industrial/electronic group SPK. Since the 1990s he has worked primarily as a film score composer.
Some of ...
# "
Sax and Violins" –
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.[Talkin ...](_blank)
# "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" –
Julee Cruise
Julee Ann Cruise (December 1, 1956 – June 9, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter and actress, known for her collaborations with composer Angelo Badalamenti and film director David Lynch in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She released fo ...
# "Move with Me (Dub)" –
Neneh Cherry
Neneh Mariann Karlsson (born 10 March 1964), better known as Neneh Cherry, is a Swedish singer-songwriter, rapper, occasional DJ and broadcaster. Her musical career started in London in the early 1980s, where she performed in a number of punk roc ...
# "The Adversary" –
Crime & the City Solution
Crime & the City Solution are an Australian rock band formed in late 1977 by singer-songwriter and mainstay Simon Bonney. They disbanded in 1979 leaving only bootleg recordings and demos. In late 1983, Bonney travelled to London and in 1985 he ...
# "What's Good" –
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. ...
# "Last Night Sleep" –
Can
# "Fretless" –
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe, who were students at the University of Georgia. One of the first alternati ...
# "
Days
A day is the time period of a full rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. In everyday life, the word "day" often refers to a solar day, which is the length between two solar ...
" –
Elvis Costello
Declan Patrick MacManus Order of the British Empire, OBE (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award in ...
# "Claire's Theme" – Graeme Revell
# "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World" –
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian rock band formed in 1983 by vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist-vocalist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout its career and pres ...
# "It Takes Time" –
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946)
is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album '' Horses''.
Called the "punk poe ...
(with
Fred Smith)
# "Death's Door" –
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in Basildon, Essex, in 1980. The band currently consists of Dave Gahan (lead vocals and co-songwriting) and Martin Gore (keyboards, guitar, co-lead vocals and main songwriting).
Depeche ...
# "Love Theme" – Graeme Revell
# "
Calling All Angels
"Calling All Angels" is a song by American rock band Train. It was included on the band's third studio album, '' My Private Nation'', and produced by Brendan O'Brien. It features Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar.
The song was the first track t ...
" (Remix Version) –
Jane Siberry
Jane Siberry ( ; ; born 12 October 1955) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, known for such hits as " Mimi on the Beach", "I Muse Aloud", "One More Colour" and "Calling All Angels". She performed the theme song to the television series ''Maniac Ma ...
with
k.d. lang
Kathryn Dawn Lang (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang has won Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical performances. Hits include the s ...
# "Humans from Earth" –
T Bone Burnett
Joseph Henry "T Bone" Burnett III (born January 14, 1948) is an American record producer, guitarist and songwriter. He rose to fame as a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band during the 1970s. He has received multiple Grammy awards for his work in film ...
# "Sleeping in the Devil's Bed" –
Daniel Lanois
Daniel Roland Lanois ( , ; born September 19, 1951) is a Canadian record producer, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter.
He has produced albums by artists including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson, Emmylou Harris, Willie ...
#
"Until the End of the World" –
U2
# "Finale" – Graeme Revell
Songs used in the film, but not included on the soundtrack, include:
* "Trois Jeux d'enfants: Nze-nze-nze", performed by Aka Pygmies (
Aka people
Aka, AKA or a.k.a. may refer to:
* "Also known as", used to introduce an alternative name
Languages
* Aka language (Sudan)
* Aka language, in the Central African Republic
* Hruso language, in India, also referred to as Aka
* a prefix in the na ...
) (from ''Centre Afrique: Anthologie de la musique des Pygmées Aka'' (Ocora C559012 13, 1987))
* "
Blood of Eden
"Blood of Eden" is the third single from English rock musician Peter Gabriel's 1992 album '' Us'', featuring backing vocals by Sinéad O'Connor. It narrowly failed to enter the UK top 40, peaking at number 43.
The single has two B-side tracks: ...
", written and performed by
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched ...
(a different version, which features Sinead O'Connor, appears on his 1992 album ''
Us'', and was released as a single; the version in the film is only available on the CD single of the version released on ''Us'')
* "Breakin' the Rules", written and performed by
Robbie Robertson
Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson, OC (born July 5, 1943), is a Canadian musician. He is best known for his work as lead guitarist and songwriter for the Band, and for his career as a solo recording artist. With the deaths of Richard Manuel in ...
(also released on Robertson's album ''
Storyville'')
* "Lagoons", performed by
Gondwanaland
Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages ...
(also released on their album "Wide Skies")
* "Travelin' Light", performed by the Boulevard of Broken Dreams Orchestra
* "The Twist", performed by
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans; October 3, 1941) is an American rock and roll singer and dancer. He is widely known for popularizing many dance styles, including The Twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard & The Midnighte ...
* "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears", performed by
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
* "La Vieil Homme De La Mer", performed by
Laurent Petitgand
Laurent Petitgand (born 28 September 1959 in Laxou, France) is a French composer, songwriter, singer and actor. He is best known for '' The Salt of the Earth'', '' The Inner Life of Martin Frost'' (2007), ''A Trick of Light'' (1996), '' Beyond ...
The German film director
Uli M Schueppel made a
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
about the recording of "(I'll Love You) Till The End of the World" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. The film was released in 1990 as ''The Song'' and re-released in 2004 under a new arrangement.
Notes
References
External links
*
*
Official website
Article on the imagery in the film''Until the End of the World: The End of the Road''an essay by
Bilge Ebiri
Bilge Ebiri (; born 1973) is an English-born American journalist and filmmaker. His first feature film, a comedy thriller entitled ''New Guy'', was released in 2004.
Early life and education
Ebiri studied film at Yale University where his thesis ...
at
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
''The Sound of Yesterday’s Future: Notes on the Until the End of the World Soundtrack''an essay by
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Ignatiy Igorevich Vishnevetsky (; russian: Игнатий Игоревич Вишневецкий; born September 5, 1986)Vishnevetsky, Ignati''Time Indefinite'': "A Talk with Sergei Loznitsa"
''Mubi'' is a Russian-American film critic, essayist ...
at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
''Until the End of the World'' at the National Film and Sound Archive''Until the End of the World''at Oz Movies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Until The End of the World
1991 films
Films about Aboriginal Australians
1990s science fiction drama films
American science fiction drama films
Australian science fiction drama films
French science fiction drama films
German epic films
German science fiction drama films
1990s English-language films
English-language French films
English-language German films
1990s French-language films
1990s German-language films
1990s Italian-language films
1990s Japanese-language films
Cyberpunk films
Films scored by Graeme Revell
Films about telepresence
Films directed by Wim Wenders
Films set in the future
Films set in 1999
Films set in 2000
Films set in Australia
Films shot in South Australia
Australian road movies
Australian action adventure films
Warner Bros. films
Films about dreams
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Fiction featuring the turn of the third millennium
1991 drama films
1991 multilingual films
American multilingual films
Australian multilingual films
French multilingual films
German multilingual films
American post-apocalyptic films
Australian post-apocalyptic films
French post-apocalyptic films
German post-apocalyptic films
1990s American films
1990s French films
1990s German films