The more that I watch of the 1970s New German Cinema (Das Neue Kino) the more manifest it becomes that, despite the usual namedropping of Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Werner Herzog as a trio, it truly was only a one-man movement. Herzog is and was so far above and cinematically dominant over his two rivals that to speak of the lesser two in the same breath as Herzog is like mentioning the Gawain poet whilst going on about John Donne’s or William Shakespeare’s poetic skills.

This is abundantly clear in lightweight films like the 1980 pseudo-documentary Lightning Over Water, directed by Wenders. It has a meaningless co-credit to his idol Nicholas Ray, whose death is central to the film, and who, along with Wenders, is credited as co-writer. In a sense this equivalence is apropos, since Wenders and Ray are both, at best, second tier filmic talents. After Johnny Guitar and Rebel Without A Cause, the James Dean teenaged sudser, are there any real films of note that Ray directed? And neither of the two films mentioned is anywhere near greatness. The only reason that this misshapen mess of a film was made was because Ray was something of an idol to Wenders and dying of cancer, not long after the two men met filming The American Friend a few years earlier.

Yet, none of this camaraderie nor artistic affinity comes through in the film. We see only one brief movie clip, from Ray’s Lusty Men, we get no background on Ray’s life, and all we are subjected to, during the film’s VERY LONG ninety minutes, is Ray’s wheezing, hacking, spitting, whining, and assorted other bodily noises as he lies about, waiting to die. Wenders then narrates that this or that moment made him feel bad. Add to that conversations that are supposed to be ‘real’ yet are clearly not a part of the ‘internal documentary,’ and some poorly acted and staged scenes that are meant to illuminate the tale of Wenders’ trip to Ray’s bedside, while also trying and failing to break down narrative conventions, and you have a genuine disaster.

That said, nothing at all is added by filming the filming process, nor is there is a grand meditation on death within. I contrast this film to the quasi-documentary form Wenders’ rival, Herzog, has perfected, and it’s clear Wenders is no Herzog. Too many scenes are done as badly acted possible reconstructions, and there is not enough reality for this to even really be considered a documentary.

It’s as if Wenders felt that the sickly Ray’s presence alone was enough reality for viewers to handle. Wrong. Add to that the fact that Ray is not a particularly nice nor engaging subject matter and when the film ends, with scenes of Wenders and his crew tossing Ray’s ashes out to sea, then kicking back with booze and anecdotes, the viewer really does not care about them nor their dead pal; which contrasts sharply with Wenders’ own real (or feigned?) emotions. This lack of empathy is especially striking to me since the images of carcinogenic rot are very familiar to me, from the death of my father a few years later than Ray’s death. That I did not care whether the old man lived nor died is the easiest, yet most striking, indictment of Wenders’ failure with this film.