An austerely elegant man whose parted hair and beady, bespectacled eyes lend him a professorial air, Wim Wenders has a face which remains peculiarly unaffected by age. In his fourth filmmaking decade, Wenders is frequently captured in photographs on red carpets of film festivals worldwide, with the same twisted mouth of one seemingly unaccustomed to smiling. He maintains such constancy in life as in art that one begins to wonder whether his frequent meditations on journeying are precisely what render him immune to the cruel passage of time.

In effect, the concept of traveling without moving or, rather, remaining stationary while shifting landscapes provide an ever-changing backdrop, is an apt visual metaphor for not only Wenders’ filmmaking but, also, Wenders himself.

Though nearly 25 years have passed since his first American-financed feature (“Hammett,” 1982) and, in that time, several of his films have enjoyed respectable releases, Wenders has yet to garner the acclaim that other foreign directors, such as Bernardo Bertolucci or Louis Malle, have enjoyed in the United States. In Europe, however, he long ago solidified his reputation as one of the continent’s greatest post-World War II directors. In fact, he is thought by some to have far surpassed his prime, though there is still debate as to which film is his last masterpiece—the more benevolent point to “Wings of Desire,” (1987) the severe to “Paris, Texas,” (1984) the downright merciless to “The American Friend” (1977).

This year, Wenders’ long-awaited “Don’t Come Knocking” was released and, as always, harsh words were thrown, including insinuations that Wenders’ visions of America were irrelevant and redundant. Certainly for all artists, there is a period of time in which a cosmic arrangement of historical circumstance, innate talent and blind luck (art’s essential component) culiminates in work that they’re unlikely to repeat. It can nevertheless be said that, far from having lost his muse, Wenders maintains clarity of vision that few contemporaries and successors can boast. He is the permanent tourist of American cinema, one who as youth soaked his fantasies in American mythology only to eventually experienced the dolor of Hollywood manipulation, and yet, despite this heartbreak, has yet to purge the American landscape from his system.

After the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 buried “Papa’s cinema,” the derisive nickname for the stale cinematic trends of 1950s Germany, the directors of New German Cinema (including the renowned Rainer Werner Fassbinder) dedicated themselves to the reawakening of German cinema through uncompromisingly political works. Rising within the late 1960s wave of this movement, Wenders differentiated himself by avoiding political commentary and rejecting linear narratives, instead exploring cinema’s potential for wordless beauty. This impulse inspired critics to brand him (along with compatriot Werner Herzog) a proponent of Sensibilist filmmaking, characterized by an unrelenting alliance to the belief that through image, one can not only dispense with narrative, but actually transcend it.

Even within his most abstract work, however, there exist the machinations of a great yarn and, unlike Herzog, Wenders does not invoke the metaphysical to bridge narrative gaps. Among Wenders’ formative idols is the quintessentially American John Ford, and, like the great Western director, Wenders has consistently embraced pure storytelling. The first film for which he gained recognition, “The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick” (1972), was an adaptation of Peter Handke’s novel about a dejected goalkeeper wandering the streets of Vienna who inexplicably strangles a woman to death. Handke and Wenders would collaborate again on “Wings of Desire” (1987), the story of an angel who must choose between mortal love and immortal longing. These two triumphs crystallize a recurring motif of individuals forced to confront the consequences of their actions. Typically, the films of Wenders’ in which this theme appears eschew tidy analyses of a character’s motivations; they neither question nor resolve, they merely observe. While this choice has been dismissed as laziness, I find it indicative of Wenders’ confidence in tales of the best kind, those without a clear beginning or end, but with a meandering middle of which most people’s lives are comprised.

Between 1974 and 1977, Wenders arguably completed his three strongest films, “Alice in the Cities,” “Kings of the Road” and “The American Friend.” The first two both star the inimitable Rudi Vogler, in the former as a disgruntled journalist who forges an unusual friendship with a young girl in search of her grandmother; in the latter as a repairer of projection equipment who, accompanied by a freshly divorced stranger, travels Germany by way of dilapidated theaters. Both films embrace the essence of the American road movie and Wenders, enamored of “Easy Rider” and “Two-Lane Blacktop,” savors every frame of his journeys. It is fitting that, in one of the theaters in “Kings of the Road,” the director himself appears as a (nearly) anonymous audience member.

While he may revel in American mythology, however, Wenders does not deal in myths, and, unlike “Easy Rider,” does not seek refuge under the all-too-convenient guise of tragedy. In “The American Friend,” an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripley’s Game,” Wenders courageously disregards the most compelling elements of Highsmith’s novel.

While preserving the novel at his narrative core, Wenders allows the novel’s events to transpire unceremoniously, avoiding unexpected bursts of violence and electric undercurrents of suspense. Rather, the intrigue seems to be an afterthought compared to the emphasis placed on the tortured central characters of Jonathan and Tom Ripley (Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper, respectively). Wenders manipulates their tremendous performances to establish their dynamic as equally fragile and mutually envious souls. The image of Ripley standing on a solitary beach in the film’s finale, cowboy hat in hand, the embodiment of a shattered American dream, captures the wordless beauty to which Wenders aspires in films that truly fulfill the ideal of visual literature.

Curiously, one gets the sense that Wenders himself is the perfect protagonist for his own films, at once embodying the drunkard, the vagabond, the poet, the romantic. Even when he is not explicitly seen, wandering the streets of Tokyo searching for the shadows of Yasujiro Ozu in “Tokyo-Ga” (1985) or nodding appreciatively to the musings of weathered Cuban musicians in “Buena Vista Social Club” (1999), Wenders haunts his films just out of the camera’s view, an invisible presence in his own art. This constant presence, as well as repeated forays into previously-tread conceptual territory, has led detractors to malign his supposed lack of cinematic range.

Certainly there are numerous familiar aspects to “Don’t Come Knocking.” As with his previous collaboration with Sam Shepard, “Paris, Texas,” “Don’t Come Knocking” features alcoholism, an embittered divorced couple, the Western landscape and a father’s journey to earn his child’s love. However, briefly reconsidering the aforementioned John Ford, it is well to note that the alternately praised and reviled director made numerous films with nearly identical plotlines.

Indeed, a healthy obsession with particular thematic elements can single-handedly lend significance to a director’s oeuvre. As a living director who has avoided dramatic falls from grace, Wenders is an easy target for accusations of repetition, accusations which similarly-culpable, late demigods such as Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock are spared.

In the end, surviving misguided criticism, Wenders remains a force in American cinema as a stranger who has seen beyond the grandiose postcards and portraits of the American frontier. Those who lament his seemingly infinite patience with his own work would do well to remember that, as with any product distributed in America, his films’ existence is contingent upon the necessity of their perspective. Of the Wenders films I have seen, some have been superb, most excellent and  few of dubious merit, but none uninspired efforts. Despite the accepted risk that I may not enjoy his every work, there is a comforting quality to the knowledge that, every other year, there will be a new Wenders offering. In the rare moments in which audiences and critics alike unite to look to him for cinematic salvation, Wenders will be as he always is, hiding in plain sight, squinting in the glare of the spotlight, the American born abroad, the tourist whose stay, thankfully for us, is permanent.