038 - Voyager

Synopsis: A series of co-incidences forces a 50's engineer to review his life

Director: Volker Schlondorff

Actors: Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, Barbara Sukowa

Date: 1992

How viewed: Bought a region 3 DVD on ebay from guy in S Korea

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says:

Among the saddest films ever made; a treatise on fate, synchronicity, self-knowledge, denial and love.

I say:

From reading other reviews (on IMDb) this is apparently a poor adaptation of a very complex book (Homo Faber by Max Frisch), which perhaps explains why you never really understand the characters. Walter Faber (Shepard) is an globe trotting engineer, a man, to quote the Latin literature (thanks Wikipedia), 'in control of his destiny and what surrounds him'. But then fate, or some rebellion against this control, takes over - on a whim, he decides to go with a fellow plane crash survivor to find an old friend, Joachim, but finds he's committed suicide (Walter got Hanna pregnant, before she married Joachim). Back in New York, on a whim, he boards a ship for Paris, and meets and falls in love with a young girl (Delpy). Mid-way through a conference in Paris, on a whim, he goes to the Louvre and they meet again, and, on a whim, to stop her hitch-hiking to Rome, he hires a car and they drive (all the way down to Athens). It all ends badly of course, they meet up with her mother (Hanna), he finds out she is his daughter, and she dies. The New York Times therefore suggests this is a variation on the story of Oedipus, and 'the Gods intervene to punish Walter for his earlier transgression'. So, should you make the effort to watch this (which will involve buying a DVD from abroad as it's not on lovefilm)? Well, the plot is predictable (given all the co-incidences), and in contrast to many others I just don't get Julie Delpy (more Dopey I think), but Sam Shepard is cool (he doesn't appear in enough good films), there are lots of great locations, and the highlight for me was the plane in the early sequence (a Lockheed Starliner, or Super Constellation), which (especially when they fire up those engines) is fantastic, so perhaps go watch a few clips on YouTube instead, and read the book!