Sometimes you pick a movie based on title alone, and The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is such a pick, but helped along by being an early Wim Wenders film. Arthur Brauss plays the title goalie who gets expelled from a game, leaves the players' bench and goes wandering through Germany (so an early example of travel as a Wenders motif). But this voyage isn't a metaphor for finding oneself as this is rather about LOSING oneself. Early in the film, Brauss, though subjected to all sorts of minor irritations, kills a woman for no discernible reason. We look for meaning, but the character seems detached from the action in this existential piece, and indeed, Wenders highlights automatic or reflexive action as often as he can. We start on a goal that goes in because the goalie assumed it was off-side and therefore didn't even have the reflex to stop. We end on him being called a chaos agent who does things because he feels like it in the moment. And throughout, we have these machines into which he plunks quarters - jukeboxes, food machines, cylinders with maps on them, etc. - evoking that same idea. What if human beings are just a series of buttons ready to be pushed and aren't responsible for their actions? And yet, the epilogue is far more strategic in its view of football, and therefore life, so an ambiguity persists. The film does meander (as per the novel?), especially in the back half, but that's perhaps part of the idea. Seek, seek, seek, but never find an answer.

Watch it with English subtitles here: https://123moviesmo.com/Movies/the-goalie-s-anxiety-at-the-penalty-kick/