I drove the 250 miles roundtrip to see Pina in 3D. The Carolina Theater is located some 10 miles south of downtown Asheville in what seems to be an area of retirees. I attended a matinee, which was a bit more affordable (at $10.25 including 3D glasses) than the evening screenings. There were about a dozen people in the audience, mostly an over-65 crowd. Before Pina began, I had to sit through a string of trailers (in 3D, no less) that assaulted the senses, including the digital 3D remake of Titanic, which I'd definitely avoid.

As soon as the main feature started, the shortcomings of the Carolina projection system became apparent. The image was dim and not in perfect focus across the screen. Digital 3D projectors have two brightness settings, one for conventional projection and the second (brighter) for 3D. In order to extend the life of the bulbs, theaters often don't crank the bulbs up to full brightness, seriously compromising image quality. A second flaw, specific to the RealD system, is that the single projector flips the images 72 times a second for each eye. While this time lag doesn't usually cause problems, it can when horizontal movement occurs, producing an unpleasant stroboscopic (stop-motion) effect. Some of the stunning dance gestures are thus unintentionally fractured into a series of stills.

That said, the film is beautifully crafted and a perfect vehicle for 3D, for dance is an art that, beyond being temporal, is spatial and sculptural. Wim Wenders has been interested in simulated vision at least dating back to his Until the End of the World, where, in the story, brain waves are reconstructed to "play back" dreams, the technology then being used to restore vision to a blind person.

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Pina begins by seating us in an empty theater watching the action in front of us on stage, but Wenders suddenly brings the camera onto the stage itself, plunging us into the middle of the action, connecting the viewer and performer in a way that cannot possibly occur in real life unless we ourselves are dancing. Not knowing anything about Pina Bausch, I had no idea what to expect of the choreography. The dances were bizarre, characterized by mechanical, almost spasdic movements, and repetitive gestures that might have come out of dreams, the subconscious, or mental illness.

Wenders has always incorporated music in his films, reaching a pinnacle with Buena Vista Social Club , a documentary about the traditional music scene in 1990s Cuba. Pina contains a wide range of musical styles, from the minimalism of Thom Hanreich through Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to Henry Purcell (in the incredible Cafe Muller scene), and back. Together with the choreography, it all works well.

There were only a few film clips of Pina actually dancing the roles, and a magic moment of the film occurs when one of those black-and-white clips transforms into full color and 3D (with the current company), giving that particular sequence a startling immediacy and making it a poignant tribute to the choreographer who passed away before the film was completed.

I should mention a unique innovation for documentary interviews. Rather than use the familiar "talking heads" technique, Wenders creates a silent portrait of each dancer he interviews, with the person's thoughts overdubbed.

Several times during the film, I closed one eye to see how the film would look in 2D, and the effect is like standing in front of a Degas sculpture of a dancer and closing one eye, collapsing the piece into a flat canvas. It doesn't quite do justice to the art, so yes, it was worth the drive to Asheville.