Art & Creativity Quote by Wim Wenders

Wenders is calling out the dirty little logistics that quietly lubricate cultural prestige: criticism isn’t just ideas and taste, it’s airfare, access, and who picks up the tab. The line works because it’s not framed as a moral tantrum; it’s a matter-of-fact inventory of perks. Airline tickets, hotels, “bags,” “beautiful photographs” - the specificity is the accusation. These are the mundane objects that make a supposedly independent critic feel looked after, then subtly obligated.

His intent isn’t to claim every review is bought. It’s sharper than that: even when a critic believes they’re being “serious,” the conditions of seriousness have already been compromised. When distributors subsidize the critic’s experience, they don’t need to dictate the conclusion; they can shape the mood. Comfort breeds gratitude, and gratitude is a cousin of leniency.

The subtext is also about power. Distributors control the channels of visibility: press junkets, early screenings, interview access, the whole promotional pipeline. Critics who refuse the perks risk being frozen out, arriving late to the conversation, or missing it altogether. Wenders, a filmmaker shaped by art-house circuits and international festivals, is especially sensitive to how infrastructure determines which films get taken seriously and which disappear.

Contextually, it reads like a warning about the transformation of criticism into an annex of marketing - a shift that’s only intensified in the influencer era, where “gifts” became “brand partnerships” and disclosure became both remedy and fig leaf. Wenders is naming the soft corruption that doesn’t need villains, just receipts.