Wim Wenders won (whew) Best Director at Cannes for this epic of peace starring Bruno Ganz as a slightly-more-than-ambivalent angel and Solveig Dommartin as the hottest French-Algerian this side of Zinedine Zidane. Not much for plot in this one folks, so we’ll cut straight to the analysis.
Ganz and Otto Sander play Damiel and Cassiel, two angels whose purpose is to “assemble and testify” reality; The film is inspired by Wenders’ own take on Rilke, so the quotidian is accordingly elevated to the sublime. Unlike Kafka’s fiction, Rilke’s poetry is life-affirming (nevermind Nietzsche). Thus the poets (angels) of the story are left in a bind: if the whole reason they are on earth is to record the beauty and perfection actualized in the rather drab thoughts and goings-on of Berliners, then it would seem that they have been given short shrift: eternity to record the beauty of the dirt, sex, dismay, and frustration of modern human existence.
There is an interesting kind of paucity to this film. This is almost unavoidable with the constant backdrop of functionalist apartment structures and drafty library interiors. The question this film poses is simple, really: how do we (and we do) enjoy life when everything seems so ugly, so unfair, and so doomed to mediocrity and decay? The answer is obvious and has been stated in one way or another by many films (Princess Mononoke, The Last Samurai, Blade Runner, etc.): It is this very ugliness which gives life its spice. As Slavoj Zizek said (in a far-too-stilted manner, if you ask me): If we are surrounded by ugliness, then we need to redefine our notions of beauty.
Peter Falk, playing himself, speaks to Damiel, even though he cannot see him: “to smoke, to have coffee…do them both together; it’s fantastic!” There are a hundred other movies that make this move: “look at life, with all its blood, messiness, unclean habits, &c.; look at its splendor! We lost the splendor when we thought we could purify the lives we lived! love! get dirty! &c.” However there is a kind of profundity to walks that Damiel takes near the wall on Alexanderplatz. There is a kind of transcendent glory in the idea that the love of two humans can flower in the craters left by bombs.
The Wings of Desire (1987)
Wim Wenders won (whew) Best Director at Cannes for this epic of peace starring Bruno Ganz as a slightly-more-than-ambivalent angel and Solveig Dommartin as the hottest French-Algerian this side of Zinedine Zidane. Not much for plot in this one folks, so we’ll cut straight to the analysis.
Ganz and Otto Sander play Damiel and Cassiel, two angels whose purpose is to “assemble and testify” reality; The film is inspired by Wenders’ own take on Rilke, so the quotidian is accordingly elevated to the sublime. Unlike Kafka’s fiction, Rilke’s poetry is life-affirming (nevermind Nietzsche). Thus the poets (angels) of the story are left in a bind: if the whole reason they are on earth is to record the beauty and perfection actualized in the rather drab thoughts and goings-on of Berliners, then it would seem that they have been given short shrift: eternity to record the beauty of the dirt, sex, dismay, and frustration of modern human existence.
There is an interesting kind of paucity to this film. This is almost unavoidable with the constant backdrop of functionalist apartment structures and drafty library interiors. The question this film poses is simple, really: how do we (and we do) enjoy life when everything seems so ugly, so unfair, and so doomed to mediocrity and decay? The answer is obvious and has been stated in one way or another by many films (Princess Mononoke, The Last Samurai, Blade Runner, etc.): It is this very ugliness which gives life its spice. As Slavoj Zizek said (in a far-too-stilted manner, if you ask me): If we are surrounded by ugliness, then we need to redefine our notions of beauty.
Peter Falk, playing himself, speaks to Damiel, even though he cannot see him: “to smoke, to have coffee…do them both together; it’s fantastic!” There are a hundred other movies that make this move: “look at life, with all its blood, messiness, unclean habits, &c.; look at its splendor! We lost the splendor when we thought we could purify the lives we lived! love! get dirty! &c.” However there is a kind of profundity to walks that Damiel takes near the wall on Alexanderplatz. There is a kind of transcendent glory in the idea that the love of two humans can flower in the craters left by bombs.