The theme is fascinating enough: hyperrationalist technician clashes with real life, is shaken by it and starts to envisage completely differently the world. Walter Faber (Sam Shepard) is an emotionally detached engineer who is forced by a string of coincidences to embark on a journey through his past. His life then collides with his past from which he thought he had escaped. Chain of coincidences or fate, something he never believed to exist? This story is really about the failure of a modern man in a modern society. In a world full of science and rationality, Faber doesn't believe in fate or determinism. He used to explain everything: God is dead and humans are poorly built machinery. His Weltaschaung changes drastically when it turns out his daughter is not only still alive, but that he is also currently in love with her. Unlikely enough, 50-year-old falls in love with 23-year-old, who turns out to be his daughter and then soon after dies. When he finally realizes his thorough loss to logic and wants to change, it is already too late. Schoendorff's style here is rudimentary and fuzzy. Shepard's unmoved sentences (perhaps consciously so, so that his delivery self-represents the sober protagonist) sometimes imply the character's dubious internal morals with respect to contravening morality issues (namely incest). In short, a partial disappointment from Schloendorff.
