Film review by Kevin Patterson
WINGS OF DESIRE Rating: **** (out of four) PG-13, 1987 Directed by Wim Wenders. Written by Wenders and Peter Handke. Starring Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander, Solveig Dommartin.
Not many modern films open with a shot of a lonely angel sitting on top of a Berlin skyscraper, peering down at the city and its inhabitiants. WINGS OF DESIRE, a film by German director Wim Wenders, does exactly that. This angel, whose name is Damiel (Bruno Ganz), is having something of a crisis. He has spent eternity with his companion Cassiel (Otto Sander), working to spread compassion and hope among humans, but he is beginning to wish he could share in the human experience. He wonders what it would be like to have a cup of coffee, or feel a breeze on his face, or, more importantly, fall in love. He gets an opportunity for the latter when he starts paying attention to Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a lonely trapeze artist whose act is going out of business.
Wenders asks the audience to swallow a large dose of peculiar ideas for this film. First and foremost, we are asked to believe that angels are simply God's errand boys: they go from place to place dispensing happiness, and they are pleased when they have a positive effect on someone, but they don't seem to be able to share in this happiness. Wenders also asks us to accept that when Damiel appears in a dream to Marion, it is apparently so vivid and real that when she sees him in the flesh, she instantly accepts him as her true soul-mate. There's also the issue of whether the human or angelic experience is more "real," though this is never really resolved. Finally, there is the role played by Peter Falk, who happens to be making a detective movie in Berlin and who eventually fits into the story in a way that can only be described as unique and unexpected. That's not to say that any of these ideas are bad, just that they really come from out of left field.
Ultimately, however, what emerges is a poetic and artistically ambitious film that serves as an examination of various facets of spirituality. There isn't really much of a plot in this film, other than Damiel's self-examination and eventual decision to "take the plunge" and become human, but I don't think it needs one. Wenders is content to let his camera wander through Berlin, following the angels as they spread intellectual inspiration in a library, or comfort lonely subway passengers, or ruminate on what it was like the first time anyone ever laughed (they have, after all, been around for eternity). Their scenes are shot in black and white and often accompanied by low, meditative music, while Damiel's scenes after he becomes human are shot in color, backed up by the sounds of everyday life in the city. Much of Damiel's attention is devoted to Marion, of course, while Cassiel's "favorite human" seems to be an old writer whom he often finds in the library or sitting in a deserted lot in the city.
What Wenders seems to be getting at is that there is a spiritual dimension to human emotional and physical experiences, whether it's something as complicated as falling in love or creating a work of art, or something as simple as running around kicking dirt or finding a peaceful, isolated place and sitting there, or even something seemingly unpleasant such as loneliness. Damiel and Cassiel are the right characters for Wenders's meditation on humanity, as apparently spiritual beings who are deprived of sense experience. I kind of doubt that angels would actually be confined to knowledge of the ethereal only, but the film wisely refrains from declaring itself as theology and can easily be read as an allegory about human existence.
Wenders and co-writer Peter Handke have created a haunting, hypnotic testament to human spirituality in WINGS OF DESIRE. There's quite a bit of metaphysics floating around here, and I'm not sure if all of it makes sense or is explained very well, but on the other hand this isn't really the point of the film. This is the sort of film that should be approached the way one might approach a poem or a piece of music rather than an essay or a novel. Its intellectual foundations may be tenuous, but its spiritual and emotional impact is more than enough to make up for it.
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