With Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander and Peter Falk
Spine #490
“To smoke, and have coffee – and if you do it together, it’s fantastic.” – Peter Falk (as himself)
Have you ever longed for something? To Touch something? Touch someone? Feel something? Feel someone? Those are the inner feelings of an angel, Damiel, who watches over the streets of Berlin in Wim Wenders’ masterpiece of human emotion “Wings of Desire”.
Bruno Ganz gives an incredibly touching and profound performance as the conflicted angel Damiel, who watches from above the city of Berlin (before the Wall was taken down). He glides around the city undetected, spending time in libraries, listening to peoples thoughts, dreams, fears, and aspirations. He’s undetected by everyone, except for children. Thought the film never explains the fact that children can be attuned to an angel’s presence, it has to be because they embody innocence.
Damiel begins to follow a French circus performer Marion (Solveig Dommartin) who pines for the exact same thing Damiel does. She wants to be loved, to be touched by a loving hand – she longs for it. Damiel silently struggles with his deep love for Marion, so much so his angel companion Cassiel (Otto Sander) begins to worry about him because Damiel confesses his wanting to take, “a leap of faith”.
Aside from children being able to detect the presence of an angel, only one other person can. He’s an American actor who flew to Germany to film a movie, and he just so happens to be a “fallen angel” himself. That American actor is Peter Falk, who plays himself.
If this film doesn’t sound like an interesting film already, let me throw on a few more layers of complexity. First, this is a three language film containing of German (how the angels talk, and the thoughts they hear of the people down below), French (the inner thoughts of Marion) and in English whenever Peter Falk is on the screen.
Peter Falk, who just passed away recently, is an incredibly underrated actor. He will always be best known as Detective Colombo, the character he played on television for over forty years. I think Peter Falk is second only to Jack Lemmon as an actor who serves to facets: the first being a great comedic actor who’s timing is impeccable and secondly for being a great dramatic actor who is able to disappear inside of the character, even when he plays himself.
This film is shot in black and white, and in the first person whenever Damiel takes the narrative of the film, we see what he sees (and how he sees it), whenever the narrative is shifted to Marion or Peter Falk, the film pops into beautiful cinematic colors, showing us that humans live a freer, and more beautiful life than the angels do. Though I think that Wenders begs the question of who serves a greater purpose: angels or humans?
This film is also Wenders’ metaphor for how the German people want to come together and tear down the Berlin Wall and reunite the nation. Wenders says in the Blu-Ray supplements that while he wrote the film, and while they were shooting the film, no one thought that the Berlin Wall would ever come down (it fell two years after the film’s release in 1989).
Needless to say, this film has a whole hell of a lot going on, and not once does Wenders lose focus, and allow this film to become misguided or pretentious. “Wings of Desire” is a truly beautiful and inspirational film, and can be viewed either two ways, one as a touching love story that shows us that God cannot even interfere with true love, and the second view of the film would be a cry for world peace.
Even though this film is incredibly heavy, and was remade as the atrocious “City of Angels” with Nic Cage and Meg Ryan (that also incredibly changes the entire plot and structure of the film), I cannot recommend this film high enough. This is truly a great film that is criminally under seen.
Rating: 10/10
