Wim Wenders, is one of the best films of the last
twenty years, a bold experiment by a gifted filmmaker. It begins by asking
questions that most of us, as adults, have abandoned: Why am I me and not you?
Where does time stop? How is it that I who am I will one day cease to be?
The film tells the story of two angels, Cassiel (Otto Sander) and Damiel
(Bruno Ganz), who wander Berlin at a time when the Wall still jagged like a scar
across the city. The angels, who can read thought, spend much of their time
listening to the inner dialogue of people passing by — on the street, stranded
in gridlock, alone and shivering on the subway. Some are middle-aged and
disillusioned, while others are old and seem to have attained some level of
reconciliation with their surroundings. Still others are teenaged and lonely,
longing to be cherished and understood.
The role of the angels, however, is not to alleviate the suffering that
surrounds them. Indeed, they are powerless to alter the course of human events.
In one affecting scene, Cassiel watches as a man hurtles himself from a tall
building. The angel shouts “Nein!” and vainly stretches out his hand. Cassiel
has never adjusted to the spiritual retardation of mortals. He wistfully recalls
the first time, tens of thousands of years ago, that he and Damiel saw a biped
“cast in their own image” come crashing out of the forest. They immediately had
high hopes for this new species of primate, and their disappointment since has
been nearly complete.
What keeps them from sinking into eternal despondency is the capacity for
wonder that children possess, a capacity that the angels see as the most
endearing quality of humanity. It is usually only children who can see the
angels, since they have not yet been taught to respect the hard-line delineation
between the real and the imaginary. Although most adults are blind to the
angels, there are moments when they too can reach toward the sublime. Both
angels keep a journal which records moments when people act on spiritual
inspiration: a bus driver who, instead of announcing his stop, shouts “Tierra
Del Fuego!” and so on. The films suggests that these abdications of
“responsibility” and “reasonableness” express our most essential sense of
self.
Despite their despair at the human condition, Damiel and Cassiel both wonder
what it might be like to be human, to “come home like Philip Marlowe and feed
the cat.” The angels inhabit a plane of existence devoid of sense experience —
they have never felt warmth or smelled a pizza. Damiel especially yearns to
experience sensation, and is fascinated by the possibility of color,
temperature, hunger — aspects of existence that we take for granted. Wings of
Desire, in fact, makes a strong case for the variegated joys of sensate
life.
But Damiel is most captivated by the ability of mortals to live in time, to
move from means to end. Eternity offers only stasis, observance. Mortality
offers change, interaction, constant reassessment of self and environment.
Damiel talks of the great possibility of a life well-lived, a “short shout”
hurled against encroaching oblivion. Within this short life, one can experience
childhood, marriage, parenthood, romantic love, fear of dying, and a myriad of
other emotions and states denied to immortal beings.
What seals his choice for him is an encounter with Marion
(Solveig Dommartin)
a sad-eyed trapeze artist. He observes Marion’s trapeze act, and is entranced by
the grace and formal mastery of her vocation. Later, he watches her in her
trailer, after she’s been informed the circus is broke and has been canceled.
She contemplates her future and tells herself there will be other circuses, and
meanwhile she can get by as a waitress. She cries a little, collects herself,
then decides to forget about it and go out dancing. Damiel is charmed by Marion
— her vulnerability and resilience evoke all that he finds most amazing about
humans.
Wenders sets this love story against much darker themes, which are never far
from the surface. Through the thoughts of the older generation, we see that the
devastating years after the war have profoundly inflected the realities of
contemporary Berlin. Wenders takes us through the city, panning the camera
across rows of squat tract housing, then cutting to horrific documentary footage
of the same neighborhood immediately after the war. Through this technique, we
see how the shadows of the past reach into the present. Though it’s rarely
mentioned, we understand that the Wall is the tangible manifestation of this
grim past.
Wenders also uses the juxtaposition of color against black and white film to
contrast the point of view of the angels with that of humans. The angels view
the world in austere, ashen black and white. The visual tone accentuates the
hopelessness of their world. The sterility of their visual world also conveys
their estrangement from sensation. By contrast, Damiel’s mortal existence is
portrayed in vibrant color. There is a sense of great liberation — we, along
with Damiel, are allowed to see color and to appreciate it anew.
Along with the visuals, one of the greatest aspects of Wings of Desire
is the poetic dialogue. Like all good poetry, Wings of Desire startles us
with fresh ways of describing sensations and ideas. Again, like Damiel, we begin
to look at familiar things in a new way. We rejoice as Damiel says after meeting
Marion for the first time: “I learned amazement last night.”
Wings of Desire looks and feels like a European art-house film. Its
“arty” dialogue and visual style would never make it in a mainstream Hollywood
picture. But, like other art-houses smashes of the last decade (Il
Postino, Cinema Paradiso), Wings of Desire is hardly
pretentious or exclusionary. It is an accessible film which will strike a chord
with anyone who still wonders about the big questions of life, and maintains, in
some small, secret place, a wonder at the simple joy of being alive.
From Savoy
on Film
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