Watching "Until the end of the World" again helped to clear some of the pessimism I have been feeling over the last few months. The four-and-three-quarter hour director's cut fills out the story in a good way, and perhaps makes it clearer what Wenders is trying to say in the movie; why it was important for him. I think in those years he was contemplating cinematography and the hundred-year legacy of the Lumiere brothers.

The film seems to reflect upon the central place of images in our society and the importance of weaving these into a cinematic story. Absorbing these images hurt the retina so much that Sam Farber, one of the characters, almost goes blind. Towards the end of the film, the characters are so wrapped-up in the images from their individual dreams that they become morosely alienated from one-another. This almost destroys them, as in the Narcissus myth. Perhaps we too, bombarded by a proliferation of images from the news, our phones and social media, struggle to process our reality in a coherent, or meaningful way.

Eventually, the only medicine that can heal Claire from her narcissistic addiction to her own dream imagery is the common story woven by the narrator, Eugene. Other than the aboriginals, he is the one character with a feeling for the common thread that holds together all the disparate elements of the tale: its wild romp across many countries and it's strange cast of obsessive individualists.

It is not at all arbitrary that the film makes its way to Australia, and to the aboriginal people whose entire sense of themselves is deeply bound up with the common dream and cultural myths that are preserved through the custodianship of individuals:

Claire: [of an elder aboriginal sharing their truck] What's he singing?

Sam: He's singing the country. The country is like their Bible. It's like that tree is Jonah. That rock is the whale. Everything is part of the story. He's the custodian of this stretch of the country, of this part of the story. If he doesn't keep it alive by telling it, it'll die. And so will he.

Eugene [narrating]: It was then, as we ran before the fatal winds that might bring about the actual end of the world, that I realized that the loss of my novel had freed me. Freed me to write it anew. Not dwelling on the past as I had done, but looking out into the future.

The characters in the film have no idea at this point if the world at large still exists, as they have lost connection with it.  For all they know, they could be the sole survivors of a nuclear cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of civilization. But Eugene sees his role to be like that of the aboriginal elder:

Winter: I can't see the point of all this strutting and fretting - we're all as good as dead.
Eugene: Not in my book we're not.  I'm not dead in here and neither are you. I'm saving your ass, Winter.
Winter: Writing won't help. Your stories won't help me.
Eugene:  Winter, the future is always a fiction.
Winter: I'm more worried about reality than fiction. I'm worried about the present, Mr. Fitzpatrick!
Eugene:  The present will look after itself. But it's our duty to realize the future, with our imagination.

I couldn't help but think about our own condition here. The last few months have seemed to be the end of the world for our dream of a better future for this country. I decided that, as in the film, the present, however bleak, "will look after itself".

Our responsibility, for example the role of a peace village, is to collectively preserve, and be the custodians of, the dream for a better future, no matter how heavily the odds are stacked up against it. Otherwise, this future may die.

Pessimism comes naturally when a genocide is taking place. But even the Nazis, who were so much more efficient at mass killing, were unable to realize their final solution for Jews (or gypsies or homosexuals). Berlin has become again the coolest place for Jews to live, within only a generation or two since the Holocaust; topping the destinations bucket-list of many young Israelis.

It will be the same for Israel/Palestine.  Neither people will be able to eliminate the other completely.  Both Palestinians and Jews are buoyed up by their distinct mythologies and cultural identities.

Our role must be to preserve the dream of a future in which Jews and Palestinians can live - together or separately - as good neighbours, rather than as rivals and enemies. The two-state solution conceived by the European countries and sometimes locally, may never emerge. It may well be that Israel, with its ever more extreme right wing governments, will eventually annex the West Bank or even Gaza. But this does not mean the end of the dream that we are struggling to implement already today in the village: of an equal shared society for the two peoples.

Actually, I am not sure that I even wish to be part of this particular dream. As an outsider that belongs to neither cultural identity, I do not align so well with it.

My own vision is of a future in which nations are simply there as a convenient framework of support for their citizens; where our association with government will consist in a social contract for mutual benefit. The state will be agnostic and indifferent with regard to our individual or group identities. It will support our endeavours, as long as these are not harmful to others. It will offer protection against exploitation, will safeguard the environment and exist as a responsible member of the family of nations or regions. That's the vision I cherish, though not all the details are worked out.