The image could have been from one of Sam Shepard’s essays/remembrances from Cruising Paradise: A man in cowboy hat, shoeless in red socks pulled over his jeans boarding a bus after throwing his cell phone against a wall in the depot somewhere in the desert Southwest. It’s one of the first scenes from German director Wim Wenders’ film Don’t Come Knocking, written by and starring Shepard.

Of the plot similarity between Wim Wenders’ second film collaboration with playwright-actor Sam Shepard (the first was 1984’s Paris, Texas) and Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, I’ll say that Wenders’ ending is heck of lot more upbeat. Shepard’s “I like to drive” sounds almost puppy-like, or as close as the laconic writer-actor will ever get to sounding eager. The more I think about it, the line has to be an in-joke between the director and the writer.

The film isn’t a comic romp, even if the denizens of Montana seem to appreciate off-kilter in their bar bands (not unlike the world of a David Lynch film). A man coming to terms with his demons isn’t the terrain of a date movie; a camera shot, from below, of Spence in a casino about to take a drink works better than any conventional exposition about where this character has been, and what taking that drink means.

Anyone who knows Shepard’s iconography of fathers and sons – and the wide gulf between them – might be as surprised by this film as I was. If you think I’m nuts for noting the humor, I’ll say this: Take another gander. Is that Shepard sheepishly looking through a bad boy scrapbook of news clippings meticulously kept by his mother? Is that Tim Roth’s bondsman character, Sutton, asking for a glass of water after getting Jessica Lange to define the differences between home fries, hash browns and clover buds? Is there such a perfectly deserted street anywhere in the United States where you can trash the contents of your apartment and then, later, rummage through for your still-working guitar and amp to play an improvised song while foot-tapping your own cymbal on a conveniently placed trashcan lid?

Only in a Shepard play. Or in a Shepard screenplay for a film by Wenders, who has long held a fascination for the American West. Here, his cinematography reveals a weird balance between a vintage picture postcard and plains version of Ballad of the Sad Café, presided over by a hangdog Shepard.

The unexpected-ness of humor makes it harder to discern but it’s there, if accompanying familiar Shepard terrain.

Reminiscent of Nick Nolte and Clint Eastwood, Shepard’s Howard Spence is a man accustomed to leaving his ghosts behind. Even if it means leaving a film shoot, compelling Roth (in a scrupulously restrained and compulsive performance) to follow suit. Only when Spence calls his mother (Eva Maria Saint) do we realize how normal this man thinks it is to call out-of-the-blue after twenty-odd years. He’s that removed from the relationships of his past.

The subtle symbolism begins right away when his mother arrives to greet him, holding a bouquet of flowers for a stop at the late Mr. Spence’s grave. When Spence takes off his hat, revealing a military-short cut, it’s with the respect of reformed hellion. However, unlike Shepard’s dramas, most recently The Late Henry Moss, the playwright isn’t resolving issues with his father.

Here, Shepard’s looking at his relationships with women and ruminating the notion of fatherhood. More than once, you get the idea that his offspring are trying to prove Spence as the man who sired them (intentional pronoun choice/nebulous spoiler alert) rather than the other way around. Clues come in the dialogue, as when Roth asks “Mothers are always the last refuge, aren’t they?” or when Jessica Lange’s Doreen says, “You should never lose track of your mother.”

Indeed, one of the film’s most touching images is of Eva Marie Saint, a woman we sense has become accustomed to aloneness after her husband’s death and Spence’s filial neglect, waving her son goodbye as he drives off in his late father’s 1950s car. Except, perhaps for May in Fool for Love, I can’t think of any female character Shepard has given as much attention as he gives Marie Saint or Lange, the latter of whom has a beautifully angry monologue to which Shepard can only stand and take.

More specific, potential spoiler alert: The thing that most excited me while watching the film was an implied reference to Fool for Love, if slightly reversed. Moreover, that the reference gave another female character (played by Sarah Polley) the most poignant of monologues satisfied me immensely. One scene between Shepard and Polley is particularly evocative, occurring after a long night of Spence sitting, like a stoic wastrel, watching mirrored Chrevolets and ice cream drivers pass by surreally. The street lighting seems vividly like a stage spotlight, capturing the lines of father and progeny, cautiously contemplating each other and the void between.

This film reminded me why I go to movies.

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