WINGS OF DESIRE
A film review by Peter van der Linden
(not copyright; publish if you like)
When I went to see WINGS OF DESIRE this weekend, I'd been procrastinating for some time; I never thought for a moment that I'd enjoy the film. And I didn't. But at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
WINGS OF DESIRE is a sort of cinematic "Waiting for Godot"; nothing happens but it takes two hours and there's a lot of complex symbolism. Jeez, is there ever symbolism. This film is a powerful argument for those who claim that the Germans should be expressly forbidden by international treaty from writing literature and from making films. And from annexing land east of the river Elbe. There hasn't been a halfway decent German filmmaker since Fassbinder went to unspool that great big final reel in the sky.
An angel falls in love with a ... trapeze artist! WINGS OF DESIRE has definite touches of KOYANNISQUATSI (I have to confess that I'm another of the people who fell asleep during that film, and my blood sugar level is perfectly fine, thank you).
All films from German director Wim Wenders are boring odysseys, and WINGS OF DESIRE is no exception. Filmed in Berlin, it represents a homecoming homage, after 7 years self-imposed exile in Hollywood. All the sights of Berlin are there: Anhalter Bahnhof, Mauer, the Grosser Stern, the Ku'damm, Potsdammer Platz. But notice anything about these places? Right! They're all in West Berlin. To me, it represented an awkward synthesis of what Berlin never quite was, and now never will be. Once the coldest focus of the cold war, Berlin now languishes, forgotten and abandoned like a faded courtesan. WINGS OF DESIRE would have made more sense if the angels' perch was not the Grosser Stern, but rather the Brandenburg Tor in the Russian sector.
There's one memorable quote about Anhalter which I hadn't heard before. Anhalter was, pre-1945, the grandest of the grand imperial railway stations. Trains departed here for Ankara, Austria, Hungary, the Levant, and a host of other exotic eastern destinations. After the Red Army came to Berlin in 1945, all that remains standing is a single wall in a field of muddy rubble. "It was not a station where the trains stopped; it was a station where the stations stopped." Wow, is that meaningful, or what? Or is it?
"Ich bin ein Berliner" said Kennedy, and the cartoonists had a field day, for he had unknowingly said "I am a doughnut" in the Berliner dialect. Wim Wenders shows us that he is a doughnut, too, but the audience deserves a more savory and filling repast.
Go see it if you're into artsy-fartsy stuff. We can argue about it over a bottle of wine in a smoky intellectual bar. Film is worth 6.0 on the Richter Scale (just like the earthquake which just occurred here)...
/Peter.
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