FARAWAY, SO CLOSE!
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Otto Sander, Horst Buccholz, Nastassja Kinski, Bruno Ganz, Willem Dafoe, Peter Falk. Screenplay: Wim Wenders, Ulrich Zieger & Richard Reitiger. Director: Wim Wenders.
Wim Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE was one of my favorite films of 1988. As corny as it might sound, I found it to be one of those rare transcendental film experiences, a beautiful and poetic tale of love and human wonder that left me feeling uplifted. I was unsure of how to approach the idea that Wenders was making a sequel to this singular film, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, all the good will in the world was unable to salvage FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! Wenders seems to have been unclear as to what made WINGS OF DESIRE special, weighing down a simple story with self-importance and a ridiculously convoluted plot.
FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! returns Otto Sander to the role of Cassiel, one of many angels who drift through Berlin observing and listening in on thoughts. He is curious about the human experience, but reluctant to take the plunge risked by his former companion Damiel (Bruno Ganz). The decision is made for him when he becomes human to save the life of a young girl. Cassiel resolves to use his physical form to intervene for good where he was unable to do so before, but that resolution proves easier said than done. He falls into despair and loneliness, eventually coming to work for a suave black marketeer (Horst Buchholz). Cassiel struggles to redeem himself, all the while thwarted by a mysterious figure named Emit Flesti (Willem Dafoe).
Like WINGS OF DESIRE, FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! shows us the angels' world in black and white, and opens with loosely connected scenes of the angels smiling knowingly over human shoulders as they work and worry. But unless my memory fails me, those scenes go on far longer in FARAWAY, and they become extremely tedious. They include a cameo by Mikhail Gorbachev, thinking important thoughts about world peace, and a scene involving a dying man and an angel played by Nastassja Kinski where the overlapping dialogue created a nightmare for the subtitler. This prologue seemed to go on and on, and while it did provide information necessary later in the story, it could have been done much more efficiently. There are too many characters, many of whom are completely irrelevant to the story.
The film's second act is by far its most effective. The reluctantly human Cassiel copes poorly with his new state, lacking the love which motivated Damiel's transformation. The marvelously expressive Sander is great during these scenes, drifting into drunken despondency with genuine pain. Also intriguing is the relationship between Cassiel and Tony Baker, the German-born/ American-raised racketeer who takes him in. Horst Buchholz has an oily charm as Baker, and there's a lively cadence to his perpetual switching back and forth between German and English. Cassiel is most interesting when he's a fallen angel, with Baker the little devil on his shoulder.
Then, during the climax, it all falls apart again. Willem Dafoe, who as Emit Flesti ("time itself" backwards ... get it?) wanders through the film making ominous but opaque statements like, "Time is the absence of money," becomes thoroughly oppressive in the final half hour. FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! becomes a silly caper film involving stolen arms and kidnapping. Peter Falk, who was so good in WINGS OF DESIRE as Damiel's guide to humanity, is simply comic relief here, although a scene involving the distraction of two security guards is very funny. WINGS OF DESIRE was whimsical, but never dopey, and FARAWAY has a real problem finding its tone.
Perhaps the most egregious sin in FARAWAY is a preachy epilogue that seems only tangentially connected to the film we just spent two and a half hours watching. WINGS OF DESIRE was a kind of message film, but the message was skillfully delivered; in the intervening five years, Wenders seems to have had all the subtlety sucked out of him. The moments that do work in FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! are mired in overplotting, and there's never any flow to the story. What's worse, it has tainted my memories of WINGS OF DESIRE.
I think I need to rent it tonight.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 fallen angels: 4.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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