Recently, my wife and I had some friends
over late one night to have large bowls of ice cream with chocolate syrup. We also fixed
strong coffee, and found ourselves pouring the coffee over the ice cream, just to do
something a little different. While we ate, we watched Wings of Desire. It was
February, five months after the devastating events of September 11th had
reminded us just how dangerous and dreadful life in this fallen world can be. Watching
that film, savoring the ice cream, talking and enjoying each others’ company, I felt
my spirit more uplifted and rejuvenated than I had since September’s deeply wounding
events. Director Wim Wenders has given us a gift with this film. He pulls us out of our
current anxieties and teaches us something we have forgotten—how to live with one
foot fully in the moment, one foot firmly planted in eternity.
I’ve
watched friends of mine fall asleep during Wings of Desire. It’s something
I’ve never understood. Yeah, it’s long. Sure, it’s slow-moving. It’s
in black and white, which bothers some people, and it’s subtitled, which also bothers
some people.
But Wings of Desire also offers pleasures and privileges
viewers experience in very few other films. We get to see with the eyes of angels. That
sounds very sentimental and sweet, but Wim Wenders takes this very seriously. Angels are
questioners, guardians, messengers, soldiers. They are agents on important missions,
invisible to people but busy working right there in the world. Through their eyes we
observe people when they don’t know they’re being watched.
I don’t mean to imply the film is about voyeurism. It’s
not. Voyeurism suggests indulgently enjoying one’s invisibility, without any care to
become involved in what is going on. These angels do not look at others out of
self-interest. Nor do they behave with mischievous motives, like the heroine of Amelie,
or the meddling agents in Touched by an Angel. These angels, like Biblical angels,
long to understand what they are watching. And, loving God, they look with love upon the
people around them, and that means they also are pained by what they see. And
occasionally, with what powers they are allowed, they attempt to guide people like you and
I to remember evidences of God, evidences of meaning and delight.
Remember (if you’re like me, you can’t) being a child. You
were small and went largely unnoticed by the grownups rushing around you. You had a
somewhat insulated world; you could pretend you were invisible, investigating the world
around you incognito. You could listen to grownups talking to each other or themselves
while they carried on either oblivious or foolishly convinced that you were too young to
understand what they were talking about (when you probably understood some things even
better than they.) That is the way the central characters of Wings of Desire see.
Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sanders) are two angels that
have been chronicling moments of grace and miracle on earth since time began. They seem to
have a particular geographical assignment, as they can recall details that have taken
place in one particular area, the area that at the time of the film’s unfolding is
right at the Berlin Wall before it came down. They wander the streets invisible in long
black overcoats, listening in on people’s thoughts as they rush to and fro.
The movie’s leisurely telepathic stroll takes us out of our
pel-mel experience of life and all its worries, and it restores to us the balanced view of
each moment, reacquainting us with the childlike joy of physical sensation and the holy
contemplation of meaning in each tactile detail. When the philosophical friends in Waking
Life discuss how the movies can capture life’s "holy moments", these
are just the kind of moments they’re describing.
Children play word games, but one stands off to the side, lonely and
worried. A crazed woman on a bicycle charged forward without a destination, murmuring,
"At last mad, at last redeemed." A man on the subway stares down into his hands,
having lost everything, despairing. A man injured in a car accident is fraught with panic
and worry until Damiel places a hand on his shoulder and guides his thoughts back through
his life to all of the wonderful things he has seen and experienced.
By attending to a person’s thoughts the way doctors listen with
stethoscopes to a patient’s heart, Damiel and Cassiel learn about their fears and
wounds, their curiosities and questions. They see life and history through the eyes of old
men, and then again through the eyes of children.
One old man—the credits call him "Homer"—is a
philosopher and perhaps an author. He can hardly walk, no one stops to notice him, but his
thoughts are so profound that the angels are drawn to him. He labors up the stairs of the
library, the angels’ favorite hangout, and sits down before a 3-d model of the solar
system. As he watches the globes in orbit, he thinks back to days when people gathered
around him to him tell stories. Now, people ignore the storyteller, go on their own way,
encountering things in isolation, and one does not speak with other. Homer is lonely and
deeply saddened, but wide awake, ready to share his wisdom if only someone will listen. He
shakes his head: "When mankind loses its storyteller, it will have lost its
childhood."
These thoughts burden the angels, as they do not understand loss.
But neither do they know the thrill of choice, of decision, of physical sensation. Wenders
represents this ignorance by showing us the world through the angels’ eyes in black
and white, and the world through human beings’ eyes in vibrant color.
Damiel is the optimistic angel, but he’s also more impulsive.
Tired of merely chronicling God’s grace through the centuries, he vows:
"I’ll conquer a history for myself … if only to hold one apple in my
hand."
Truth is, Damiel desires more than to hold an apple. There is a
woman, a trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) in a traveling circus, who captures his
attention. But this infatuation is more than most you’ll see in onscreen romances.
Damiel is truly moved by her entire person: her innermost thoughts, doubts, struggles, and
courage. But it’s not merely platonic appeal: she’s a beauty, no doubt about it.
As she changes her costume, the line of her bare shoulder that brings all of his desire to
a painful focus. Perhaps the most powerful draw of all is that she instinctively phrases
her thoughts as though talking to someone invisible, as though she sense he is there.
Damiel winces when she looks right through him and thinks, "I often think in a wrong
way because I think as if I were talking to someone else."
Damiel is edging to a decision that will break up his partnership
with Cassiel. That is emphasized by just how different the two angels are. Damiel’s
tendency is toward awe and delight, while Cassiel tends to be impatient, preoccupied with
suffering. Damiel is always drawn to children, but Cassiel keeps his distance. At the
circus, Damiel is wide-eyed, engaged, transfixed by the drama and the grace of
physicality, unable to take his eyes off the lady hanging from the trapeze. Cassiel would
rather sit next to the Middle Eastern woman in the Laundromat and sigh heavily while the
spin cycle turns.
These two ways of looking at life seem to be Wenders’ chief
concern. Those who focus on themselves seem to spiral downward and inward, while those who
look about in expectation of blessing are lifted up and thrilled. While Damiel and Cassiel
take a time out to compare notes, they happen to be seated inside a car that’s on
display in a showroom. Two customers approach the car and discuss it. It’s an
incidental moment, but their differing responses to the car are worth noting: One thinks
about the exhilaration of driving with the top down. The other remarks, "It looks
like a pimp’s jalopy!" One perceives possibility and joy, the other’s pride
and cynicism could ruin that possibility.
As I follow Damiel in his quest to understand human experience, I am
reminded of that annoying Corn Flakes advertising slogan: "Taste them again, for the
first time." That sums up what happens to me as I watch the movie: I am reawakened to
the simple but rich pleasures of a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning, of running and
whistling, of picking out a good jacket, of having newspaper ink on your fingers.
Strangely, I also come to value and appreciate life’s lows, as Damiel feels the ache
of showing up too late to find the girl he wants to meet, as he learns the hard way about
the color and taste of blood.
Wenders’ masterstroke is the casting of Peter Falk… as
himself. Falk is Falk, visiting Berlin to play a part in a thriller about Nazis. Falk
becomes the perfect human being, seizing the moment every moment of every day. Some seize
the day out of a hedonist desire to consume life for themselves; Falk’s aggressive
enthusiasm is portrayed instead as a sincere, childlike, joyful appreciation of
everything. He pays close attention to details, like which hat to wear in the movie. And
he has a sixth sense about angels, suspicious of moments when he’s being watched.
Falk’s character in this film has changed my life, made me more aware of the powers
and mysteries that surround me, provoked me to glance over my shoulder now and then.
The film culminates in a monologue that can seem ludicrous, overly
melodramatic, and even off-putting. But the more I watch this movie and become acquainted
with the woman who delivers the speech, the more I realize why Wenders concludes the film
this way. The woman speaking has, in a sense, met her guardian angel halfway. He is
choosing to step into the world of experience to share it with her. But she is finally
speaking out loud those things she has long kept inside—she is ignoring the passage
of time to appreciate things from a higher perspective, to speak, if you will, with the
tongues of angels.
The speech, and other portions of the film, will probably seem long
and difficult the first time you watch it. But be patient. Don’t give up. Watch it,
wait six months, and watch it again. I have found Wings of Desire to pass the test
of great art: it is better, richer, more revealing every time you visit it. It enthralls
me, and it sends me back to my life a richer person, glad to be alive, looking about at
the mundane and the everyday with new appreciation.
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