If _Land of Plenty_ is Wim Wender's last "road movie" (a phrase
he is so identified with that it was trademarked for his production
company), it is certainly worthy of the company of _Paris, Texas_,
_Alice in the Cities_, _The State of Things_, et al. In fact it is
a companion of sort to _Paris_. Both are set in Los Angeles and the
desert beyond, featuring a road trip to find a relative, deliver
a live boy or a dead body. John Diehl's 9/11-obsessed Vietnam vet
(the film was shot within a year of the terrorist attacks) could be
the militant clone of Harry Dean Stanton's lost soul, wandering in
a different kind of desert; he also smacks of that famous madman
ranting on a freeway interchange. Michelle Williams' angelic
character, daughter of oversea missionaries and helping out at an
LA homeless shelter, is much older than Hunter in _Paris_, but
she also gamely helps out her relative (a long lost uncle instead
of a father) on his dubious mission, armed with walkie talkie and
all. In the end, is Williams the sister of mercy that is delivered
to the brother of the dead Afghan immigrant holed up in Trona, a
"town" every bit as God-forsaken as any desolate ghetto in Texas? The
film gently chides the Diehl character's misguided obsession with
national security and turban-wearing foreigners; he is a stand-in
for a nation lured into the Iraq war on false WMD claims. If
_Land of Plenty_ were made today, the holy fools' obsessions would
have been election fraud claims (so phony that even Fox agreed to
paid close to a billion dollars to settle); the "enemies" under
surveillance would be fellow Americans; and the tone of the story
would no doubt be far less benign.

The crystal clear digital camera cinematography is nowhere near as
evocative as Robby Mueller's grainy analog film stock in _Paris_,
and the music (lesser songs by Leonard Cohen) cannot match Ry Cooder's
riffs. Having recently rewatched both _Paris, Texas_ and _Wings
of Desire_ though, what strikes me about _Land of Plenty_, as in
so many Wenders films, are the grace and gentleness of the women:
not just Nastassja Kinski and Solveig Dommartin but also Hunter's
stepmother played by Aurore Clement. They are mostly stuck in one
place weeping after the wanderlust men. In _Land of Plenty_
Michelle Williams gets to be one of the adventurers, and she is
utterly unforgettable. The film is a shout out for those long
forgotten Vietnam veterans too. It is chilling to remember what
happened in that war; Nixon's "Linebacker II" campaign would have
been a war crime orders of magnitude beyond what is happening in
Ukraine today (not that there is any excuse for Russia's conduct,
and we can only correct the present not the past).

I must have done right past Trona once. It is on the exit ramp
of the Death Valley National Park. Driving in a rental car so low
on fuel that I had to turn off the headlights, not wanting to be
stranded on a desolate half-paved road which could have seen
temperatures in the 20s at night, I was finally saved by the sight
of a few door lights in that area before limping back to Ridgecrest.
I finally found my motel and ate at one of those once-ubiquitous
Chinese buffet places that offer the same cheap, awful, greasy food
across the entire United States. You could have driven west from
Denver on I10, passed by Georgetown with elevation (8000) eight
times its population, where not ever McDonald's could grow, and
there would be one of those Chinese buffet places offering the
exact same food. It used to be my weekly staple. Now most of them
have been wiped out by COVID. Maybe someone can make a fitting
road-movie tribute for them?