More a tone poem or a mediation on existence, Wim Wenders’ modern classic Wings of Desire is anything but a narrative film that relies on plot points and telegraphic filmic gimmicks. In the film, angels are neither the vengeful or guardian type most often portrayed in most movies. In fact, Wenders’ angels do little more than observe and record the doings of man and listen to their thoughts, forever charged to keep an eye on God’s handiwork.
The angels in Wings of Desire watch over a pre-unified Berlin, the spiritual divide keeping them from the material world in the same manner the Wall separates East from West. They watch people read in a library, those stuck in a traffic jam, put an invisible hand on shoulders of those considering suicide or dying in traffic accidents. They feel the shadow of Nazism that still lingers over the city 40 years after the end of Hitler’s reign. However, rather than interfere in the missteps of man, they silently watch and record notes.
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While the idea of an angel wanting to be mortal was later made into the Hollywood-friendly City of Angels, Wenders is not interested in plot. Instead, like the angels, we soak in the musings, despair and joyous thoughts of the ones being observed. Like the angels Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), we are given a telepathic link into the minds of the mortals. Yet, it’s not the thoughts that are most profound. It’s the simple things in life we take for granted that the angels cannot enjoy that Wings of Desire showcases. The smudge of newsprint on the fingers, a wayward cigarette butt, even acknowledgment of your existence. These simple things an angel cannot experience, Damiel bemoans early in the film.
Wings of Desire moves like a daydream with its soaring camera work and beautiful black and white images of Berlin. Photographed by Henri Alekan (the master behind Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast), we sometimes see the eyes of the angels, sometimes the perspective of the humans and sometimes we coolly watch the angels watching and longing to be part of the human world. Though at first fragmented, the angels return to the same mortals again and again. We see Peter Falk (playing himself) working on the set of a Holocaust film. Damiel encounters and falls in love with a trapeze artist. He longs to be mortal and hold her.
Ganz, with his ordinary, gentle looks is perfect as the heartsick Damiel. He plays the role placid, a knowing beneficent force. But when he does become mortal, and Wenders plays one of the greatest tricks since Wizard of Oz, when all becomes color, Ganz plays the role with wonder of a child seeing the world for the first, questioning the existence of color and why he is here and not there.
Wenders does not make Wings of Desire easy for us. Whether in its abstract musings, confrontational music by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or the thought-provoking finale when Damiel and the trapeze artist finally meet, Wings of Desire stands along with Paris, Texas as the highest points of the director’s oeuvre. It is a complex work of art that can only grow in stature from repeated viewings, confronting not only the banalities of our existence that can blossom into beauty with the right perspective, but also those existential doubts that connect the point where we end and other people begin.
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