Wings of Desire (1988)

A beautiful, melancholy examination of human existence, Wim Wenders "Wings of Desire" opens with Damiel, an angel (Bruno Ganz), looking down on the city of Berlin and listening to the thoughts of the people in the city below. Damiel, and fellow angel Cassiel (Otto Sander), circulate unseen through the city, vicariously experiencing life in order to, as Cassiel says, "assemble, testify, preserve". Paradoxically, one of the overwhelming feelings they encounter as they move through the teeming city is loneliness and isolation. Much of the film is a stark black and white study of 1980's Berlin, a city divided by the Wall, and there are numerous scenes around the derelict Potsdamer Platz as Cassiel walks alongside of elderly poet Homer (Curt Bois) who is searching for the vibrant city that he remembers. While experiencing the joy of children at a small circus, Damiel finds himself drawn to Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a desperately lonely trapeze artist, and ultimately has to decide whether to renounce his immortality in order to be with her. The leisurely paced film is surreal and mesmerising at times, with beautiful scenes at the circus (Solveig Dommartin's aerialist scenes are excellent), around the Potsdamer Platz, and in the Hans Scharoun's Berlin State Library, where the angels congregate to listen to the thoughts of the patrons. A strikingly original work of art, "Wings of Desire" is one of the great German films to come out of the cold-war era. "City of Angels", a much less acclaimed American adaptation with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan was released in 1998.

The simple idea of mixing poetry, existentialism and romance with unearthly beings it has proved as success. It is filmed in black and white by Wim Wenders which is one of my favorite directors.We can see the angels watching us from above...how they act and what they say, it makes us wonder about the meaning of our lives. Sometimes we ask for others opinion, but what better point of view than an angel 's. From above everything loses meaning, everything is diminished.The love story is pure and beauty, and it does not look like anything we are used to.9/10

An angel (Bruno Ganz) gazes along the streets and city of Berlin, ruminating, being romantic for... something, anything, or for an actual person. And meanwhile, a famous actor (Peter Falk) ruminates about the ways of the world, of acting, of cinema (if not directly then in the subtext), and we follow him for a bit. Whether there will be direct interaction, who knows. But the angel makes a decision, and falls from the sky to try and become something else. Ultimately, the Angel is all about romance - whether he finds it directly is another question.Such is the thrust of Wim Wenders Wings of Desire, a film that many have touted as one of the greats of the 1980s. I think this is the kind of movie you either go for, or you don't. I mostly went for it, and the poet in me liked a lot of the words that came out in the voice-overs. It's a very humanistic movie and if nothing else it can be praised by that... actually, it's the visual scope that dominates and triumphs (I'd like to take this DP out for a beer).If only Wenders could back off just a little from his super-mega-sumptuous-Berlin-poetry and get back to the story a little more, it would really be something fully magical (rather, a marriage of the two). I have to recommend it strongly for its visual and usually aural beauty, and Ganz's touching performance too. But I didn't find it to be quite the masterpiece most do. I apologize on behalf of my brain not taking in all of the supposed awe-inspiring words spoken by people (almost everyone has the poetry of a master, and many of them just sound like they're reading as opposed to naturally speaking), but it's just how I took it in.Oh, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds makes a prominent appearance in the third act. Reason enough to see it alone, and it makes the final act have a stronger impact than you might expect - there's poetry AND rock and roll combined!

In West Berlin, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who wonder the world observing and providing comfort. Damiel wants to be more human. He starts to fall for trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin) at a rundown circus. There is also the elderly Homer who recalls the Berlin of old. Another is Peter Falk who is shooting a film taking place in the Nazi past but he's also hiding a secret from his own past.The best way to describe this is a German meditation. It's digging into the Nazi past in an artistic way. I personally don't see anything compelling about that. It is so slow and Damiel is so passive. It infuriated me more than appealed to me. Of course, everybody in the world loves it but all the inner monologues and the unemotional acting bored me.