Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 10-September-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Wings of Desire (1988)

For years I've been under the impression that "Wings of Desire," Wim Wenders' art-house fave from the '80s, is a tender film about an angel who gives up immortality for a woman. This is the premise of the Nicolas Cage-Meg Ryan flick "City of Angels," which purportedly retells Wenders' story in English instead of German and French. So I was surprised to find that "Wings of Desire" isn't really a romance about a celestial being in love. There is an angel who forsakes his immortality and lands a lovely lady, but that doesn't happen until 90 minutes have passed. The time leading up to that moment is filled with thoughts on humanity, connection, and World War II, and I venture to say that, even more than a sappy romance, it's not a mix for everyone.

In long languid takes, Wenders follows not one but two angels as they do their thing in modern Berlin. This consists of walking around unseen and watching over people, occasionally giving them comfort and encouragement. From the beginning, one of the two (Bruno Ganz) yearns to taste the mortal coil with all its vicissitudes and color. (His kind sees everything in black and white.) His desire is heightened by the discovery of a pretty acrobat (Solveig Dommartin) at a crossroads on her lonely journey. (The circus: hallmark of art films about Life.) The other angel (Otto Sander) focuses his attention on an aged writer (Curt Bois) who meditates on storytelling and the course of history. He spends a lot of time in a nifty-looking library and the empty places left by war.

The angels' view of the world is meant to illustrate how the mundane and painful realities of the human experience are beautiful nevertheless. The message is dampened by a number of weak scenes, most of which feature Peter Falk playing himself. The actor, in Berlin to make a movie, muses on the Jews' fate during the war but also takes up several minutes just picking out a hat. Like two long sequences with Nick Cave singing in a nightclub, these seem like filler or the cinematic equivalent of name-dropping. The main storyline for which the movie is known (I think) also illustrates the beauty of the human experience, specifically when it's graced by love. Ganz and Dommartin both have compelling faces, and I like her character's self-reflections; it's unfortunate, then, that their meeting at the end is so stagy.

All in all, "Wings of Desire" delivers fairly commonplace philosophical notions in an arty package that's neither as limited nor as accessible as the average romantic film.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.