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Review

The film opens on an endless expanse of reddish rock and sand under a vast cerulean sky. It could be Martian terrain with atmosphere or the North American plains a thousand years ago, except for the assembled trucks and trailers, and the incongruous segway. The film crew is shooting a Western and Howard Spence (Shepard, who also wrote the screenplay), the leading man, has ridden off to the distant horizon. He escapes to Elko, Nevada, to visit his mom (Saint) for the first time in three decades, taking temporary asylum in her basement. An agent (Roth) of the company that bonded the film is already on his trail.

In the basement, Spence finds a scrapbook of tabloid clippings recounting the misdeeds of his raucous life. He is a man at a crossroads, a man with no purpose and no direction — until his mom mentions the woman who tried to contact him 20 years ago to tell him he had a son. He thinks he knows who that was.

He takes off to Butte, Montana, in his deceased father’s classic mint green roadster, to meet the son (Mann) he never knew he had, to meet again the woman (Lang) who bore him. His journey of self-discovery reflects universal issues of relationship and belonging, of the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, and the accompanying forces that drive them apart.

Director Wenders captures the fluidity of time, the quality of air and light, the elusive elements that define an environment; he conveys a person’s inner landscape with a gesture or a violent flash. He has a superlative ensemble to work with, and the focal point is Shepard’s portrait of Spence. Despite Spence’s concentrated, lifelong attempts to disappear himself, to keep always something halfway hidden, he is still connected, albeit unknowingly.

Don’t Come Knocking is a poignant examination of the human condition, told with humor and compassion, and without illusion. It’s an unexpected gift, a small, crystalline gem providing an unobstructed view of one man and the life he created for himself.

 -- Ann Yarabinee