Historia de Lisboa

I've spent the last few days trying to come up with the perfect description for this movie, and I'm afraid another reviewer beat me to it: "This movie is good for the soul."

This is the perfect movie for the uninspired artist who is suffering from malaise, writer's block, disenchantment or perhaps just an overall pissy attitude toward the world. It's absolutely beautiful. The actors are endearing, the story is charming (though not without a few poignant touches of darkness & spookiness), and the music is downright hypnotizing.

This film gave me a big smile from beginning to end. The humour is what I call "real life silly"--these are things that have happened to us all at one point or another, and to watch the characters' reactions is hilarious, because we say to ourselves, "That could've been me!"

But overall this is a movie about love, not necessarily between people but perhaps between a person and a city or a person and a camera or a person and a microphone. It's gorgeous in its ambiguity because, like I said up front, it can inspire any of us out of our deepest rut.

In past reviews of Wim Wenders' work I have been brutally uncomplimentary; he has often struck me as a meandering type who lacks the ability to pull his visions together coherently. But this film has given me a completely new appreciation for his lucidity and ability to convey a profound (yet abstract) thought. The two monologues at the end carry perhaps the strongest messages I've ever seen on film. Simple but resounding.

I give LISBON STORY 10 stars, something which I rarely do even to my favourite films. But this movie is literally perfect, I can't criticize a single thing (edit: OK, after thinking real hard, I suppose there's one flaw... the guitarist's fingers don't exactly match up with what he's playing in one scene. But I think we can all agree that's nitpicking). Enjoy!