Wim Wenders Was Decades Late. His Apology Still Matters.
The director's acknowledgment of his failure to protect a 13-year-old actress 50 years ago cannot undo the past. But it offers an example of what genuine accountability can look like.
In 1975, when the German actress Nastassja Kinski was just 13 years old, she appeared topless in the movie Wrong Move, directed by the Oscar-nominated Wim Wenders — one of Europe’s most famous filmmakers.
Kinski was a child. Wenders was an adult. And last month Kinski told a German newspaper she’d been asking Wenders to change the film for years. “That was my first film, he was my first director,” she told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview in May. “And he didn't protect me.”
Last Wednesday, Wenders announced that he was acknowledging the errors he’d made and apologizing “unreservedly” to Kinski. “As the only person responsible at the time for Wrong Move who is still here, I recognize that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then,” Wenders wrote in an Instagram post. “For that, I apologize to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs and buts.”
Wenders also said that the non-profit Wim Wenders Foundation, which owns the film, would be “withdrawing it from all current forms of distribution and exhibition.” Streaming services, television broadcasters and distribution partners were being instructed, he added, to “cease public access to it.”
In reaction to Wenders’ statement, a lawyer for Kinski told the AFP agency that the move was “long overdue,” and of course it is. It should not have taken more than 50 years for a director to acknowledge that a child actor was failed by the adults responsible for her welfare. It should not have required years of requests from Kinski herself. And it is fair to wonder why Wenders, now 80, did not arrive at this conclusion sooner.
Preeti Jha
But he didn’t, and now he finally has, and that matters. In public life, we often talk about accountability as though it is a destination. Someone did something wrong. They apologize. The matter is settled. Everyone moves on.
But real accountability is a process, and one of the most difficult parts of that process is the willingness to admit that our understanding of the world has changed.
Wenders could have defended himself. He could have argued that standards were different in the 1970s. He could have insisted that the film was a product of its time. He could have pointed to the countless other people involved in its production. The other movies that featured topless girls. He could have taken the approach that so many public figures do when confronted with criticism: minimize, contextualize, deflect.
Instead, he said he was wrong and he did so in a way that acknowledged not only the mistake itself, but the possibility that his perspective had evolved because he had listened to others. “The many reactions, comments, and conversations of recent days have played a significant role in further sharpening my understanding," he wrote in the post. "For that, I am grateful. Only an open and respectful exchange can lead us to reconsider positions and reassess responsibilities,” he added, concluding that it is “necessary for our society to find appropriate ways of dealing with controversial film works from the 20th Century and to face new learning processes and inclusive perspectives regarding cinema.”
Often, our public discourse still seems to be built around the idea that changing one's mind is a sign of weakness or inconsistency. Politicians are mocked for it. Executives avoid it. We reward certainty and punish reconsideration. For all of his flaws and missteps and ill-judged decisions of the past, Wenders deserves credit for doing something many people spend their lives avoiding: admitting, without qualification, that he got it wrong.
None of this erases what happened to Kinski and nor should it. If we want to foster a culture in which people take responsibility for their mistakes, though, we have to acknowledge it when they do.
Wenders' apology cannot give Kinski back the protection she deserved as a child. But it can offer a model for how someone might confront a past failure: with humility rather than defensiveness, with reflection rather than excuses, and with a willingness to say, plainly and publicly, that they got it wrong.
In a world in which admissions of fault are often as scarce as they are carefully qualified, it is worth recognizing the power of that.
Emma Haslett
