The thing about a film like "The State of Things", much like Wenders' earlier film "The Wrong Movement", is how too much introspection can really start to drag one down over time. Both pictures have the unfortunate distinction of talking themselves to death. This is not a film that gives you insight into life so much as insight into its specific characters. The value of this tends to decrease in the face of the fact that we never really get to know the characters in the first place. So this story seems to play like an ever-extending observation into enigmas, where each answer is really a question, like the cinematic equivalent of the "Jeopardy!" game show.
There are moments of true beauty, there's no denying that. But the beauty comes in the cinematography, the silences - not in the dialogue. The multiple cinematographers create a nice feel together, a fantastic series of images. "The State of Things" is almost always worth looking at, just not always engaging to fully experience. The ending is somewhat of a curiosity. Neither particularly disastrous nor completely convincing. It feels more like an artistic statement. And not one of great depth or meaning, either.
