WINGS OF DESIRE (Der Himmel über Berlin) A-
Germany France (127 mi)
1987 d: Wim Wenders
For one human being to
love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been
entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for
which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are
beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must
learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their
solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But
learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long
time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind
of aloneness for the person who loves.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters
to a Young Poet, 1929
When the child was a
child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me and not you? Why am I
here and not there? When did time begin and where does space end? Isn’t life
under the sun just a dream? Isn’t what I see, hear, and smell only the illusion
of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who
are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn’t before I was, and that
sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?
–—Damiel (Bruno Ganz)
One of the remarkable aspects of this film is that it was
made “prior to” the fall of the Berlin Wall, which came two years after the
film’s release, yet it also feels so relevant to the aftermath of 9/11, a time
when turmoil, authoritarianism, and terrorism had such a significant impact in
our lives and we were trying to “see” the world in a different light. For the Düsseldorf-born Wenders, a specialist
in existential road movies like Kings
of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), this highly
acclaimed fantasy love story was a sort of homecoming after eight years in the
United States. Winner of the Best
Director prize at Cannes, enter Wim Wenders and this film offering the aerial
vantage point of two angels hovering over the city of West Berlin, Bruno Ganz
as Damiel and Otto Sander as Cassiel, who existed before Berlin was even a
city, before the presence of humans, men in dark overcoats and pony tails with
no visible wings, yet they’re perched atop cathedrals, sitting on statues or on
the ledges of skyscrapers high above the city, like gargoyles observing the
citizenry below. Invisible to the naked
eye, seen only through the innocence and naïveté of children, their presence
sensed by the blind, they freely move about the city at will, eavesdropping on
the inner thoughts of humans, but excluded from matters of the flesh or
mortality, offering comfort, like a light touch on the shoulder or putting
their arms around someone in need, though whatever grace they can offer is only
momentary, as they can’t prevent fate from happening, as evidenced by a man intent
on jumping off a roof to his death. Witness
to the most tragic human events since the beginning of time, there is a
meditative somberness and pervasive melancholy felt throughout, as death and
misery is their constant companion, where they see and hear everything, perhaps
the answer to silent prayers, as the angels lend a glimmer of hope where before
there was only darkness, Motorcycle
Accident--"Wings of Desire"-HQ with English subtitles YouTube
(2:58). As they meet periodically and
recall the events of the day, pointing out particularly elevated moments that
stand out, according to Cassiel their job is to “observe, collect, testify,
preserve,” where they are God’s witness to the events that transpire
below.
As evidenced by the documentary style cinematography of Henri
Alekan, who much earlier shot Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND HE BEAST (1946), this is an
abstract travelogue of Berlin, a near plotless, highly stylized, avant-garde
film that seems to meander through the voices of the living, as random thoughts
race across the screen, from strangers populating an airplane to residents
inside apartment buildings, even those sitting inside the same room, or passengers
in cars or busses to passing trains, including pedestrians on the street, all
given a collective stream-of-conscious voice that provides the internal poetry
of the film. The movement of the camera
seems to signify the constant movement of the two angels, from aerial shots on
high, to the tops of tenement buildings, with a view of children playing in the
courtyards below, where vast industrial landscapes reveal a wasteland of
emptiness and unused space, traversed by the bearers and collectors of lost
souls, a mentally anguishing job that has no beginning and no end, though as we
see in their repeated visits to public libraries, there appear to be many more
just like them, as there are others that show signs of recognition, while also
hanging around after hours when only the cleaning crew is present. The ambitious scope of this film is highly
unusual, where the length plays into a kind of testament of time, where the
filmmaker establishes a unique rhythm that moves throughout the infinite scope
of history, including images of bombs dropping in World War II as we watch the
city burning while Nazi officers talk back and forth among themselves, where we
also see Jews identified by the emblematic star, as Damiel reveals some of them
stole food from the dogs in the camps.
While expressed in a visually impressionistic mosaic, the film itself
becomes an experiment in perception, more like a dreamlike reverie, given an
equally eclectic musical design from Jürgen Knieper (some of which can be heard
here: wings of desire soundtrack), the two
angels meet every day to compare notes, where the largesse of history stands in
stark contrast to the smaller more intimate moments of ordinary life, where
they’ll pick out distinguishing fragments of humanity.
The
Films of Wim Wenders: Cinema as Vision and Desire Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter Beicken, 1993
Perhaps it is a sign of Wenders’
discomfort with the class-determined particularities of everyday life that
leads him to fantasize a heavenly perspective in Wings of Desire. Providing the angelic point of view, the camera
descends; it does not observe its subjects as they see themselves, but rather
as they are themselves subject to an extraterrestrial force. Wenders’ “symphony
of a great city” is conducted from on high. His angels are caring but
inescapably condescending. When he plies the angels’ perspective, he creates a
well-imagined, even moving trope of a city battered by history, torn by
politics, and guarded by fantastic figures, who see and hear everyone’s
distress. In these sequences, his camera is more supple and sinuous than it has
been, swooping from great heights, entering apartment rooms, wandering and
drifting through the city, making divine cinema. But in the end, neither the
city nor its inhabitants remain the central object of his gaze. The film is
diverted by a quasi-mystical meditation on romantic love, constructed through
the conceit of a male angel who desires to slip out of eternity, into time,
sexuality, and domestic love.
As Damiel and Cassiel traverse the city, the ease of their
friendship is apparent as they discuss being there for the creation of the
earth, describing ancient events like they just happened yesterday, where they
have literally seen and heard it all, where one might think they’d remain
detached and aloof, yet they’re like spiritually advanced monks, sentient
creatures themselves, perhaps best expressed by extraordinary feelings of empathy,
where they are grief-stricken by a man haunted by the atrocious things
witnessed during the war, or emotionally devastated when the man ultimately
throws himself off a roof. To this end,
Damiel has second thoughts about living an eternal existence, “Sometimes I get
fed up with my spiritual existence.
Instead of forever hovering above, I’d like to feel some weight to me,
to end my eternity, and bind me to earth.”
Their perception is expressed in black-and-white, but as they are
constantly making intimate contact with the living, the screen quickly moves to
color to identify their world, which distinguishes the angel’s reality from the
human point of view, a change that occurs throughout the film, reminiscent of a
similar tactic used in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE
AND DEATH (1946). However, as angels are
privy to human thoughts, this leads to an additional shifting perception that
occurs when their thoughts merge, as Damiel becomes fascinated with the dreams
of a trapeze artist named Marion, none other than Solveig Dommartin, the film’s
real discovery, a unique presence who happened to be the director’s girlfriend
at the time, who seamlessly moves from French to English to German in the film,
literally diminishing any need for established boundaries, becoming a living
personification of a European ideal of merging cultures. While she soars above the ground as he does,
even wearing a pair of feathery wings, she expresses her fears and desires,
including a palpable fear of falling, while also lamenting her continued
isolation, easily befriending or socializing with others, yet remaining
uniquely alone. Damiel’s fascination
with her can be seen at an underground dance club, Wings of Desire - Crime & The City
Solution - Six Bells Chime YouTube (4:21), where her existential anguish is
a key to understanding the film, confessing “I waited an eternity to hear a
loving word.” Interspersed throughout
the entire film is a recurring poem from co-writer Peter Handke that opens with
the familiar refrain, “When the child was a child” from “Song of Childhood,” each
time representing the exuberant curiosity of a young mind, introducing a theme
on becoming, offering clever variations on that theme that runs throughout the
picture.
Equally curious is the use of American actor Peter Falk,
playing himself, famous at the time for his role as a deviously persistent detective
in the long-running television show Columbo
(1971 – 2003), where he’s humorously identified on several occasions, even
by Marion, where Wenders uses the comedy to alter the seriousness of tone,
adding levity to what amounts to a metaphysical experience. Falk is in rare form as an actor brought to
Berlin for a historical return to the concentration camps of World War II, with
extras standing around wearing Nazi uniforms and actors playing Jewish
prisoners, adding old newsreel footage, resurrecting the ghosts of forgotten
memories, showing a vivid connection with the present and the past, but also
the clever use of a film within a film.
Falk is mostly seen standing around waiting for his scenes, where he’s
prone to taking long walks through a graffiti-laden industrial wasteland, where
off to the side is food hut selling coffee.
Falk surprises Damiel by being able to sense his presence, offering his
hand in friendship, even though there’s no one there, yet assuredly adding, “I’m
a friend. Compañero.” It’s the plain-speaking, folksy style of Falk
that eventually compels Damiel to trade in his wings for mortality, describing how
great it is to smoke a cigarette, drink a cup of coffee, or slap your hands
together when they are cold. Once
descended to earth, there’s no guarantee he’ll ever find his ethereal
aerialist, especially after the circus disbands and moves on for the season,
leaving each of them as disconnected souls in the heart of a thriving
city. With the tug of romanticism in the
air, and the suddenly upbeat spirits of Damiel who’s experiencing the joys of
being alive, seeing colors for the first time, he initially runs into Falk on
the set, sharing a revelatory moment, sending Damiel off on his own to discover
his own adventures. Of all places, the
two (Damiel and Marion) finally meet in the Berlin underground, listening to
the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, an Australian artist who lived in
Berlin during the 80’s, both drifting to the bar, literally sensing the
presence of one another as if they’ve known each other all their lives. At the time a divided city, the film is a
meditation on Berlin’s past, present, and future, a dream of unification, made
with a minimalist script, where it’s ultimately an atmospheric mood piece about
experiencing a yearning for a deep-seeded connection with life and love, where
the world takes on a magical and hypnotic allure, where life is literally an
awakening. Marion has an exhilarating
soliloquy at the end that feels like a mad rush of a dream just before one
awakes.
Now it’s serious. At last it’s
becoming serious. So I’ve grown older. Was I the only one who wasn’t serious?
Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was
alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness
means I’m finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I’m at last alone. I must
put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don’t know if there’s destiny
but there’s a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town—the
whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We
incarnate something. We’re representing the people now. And the whole place is
full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone’s game.
I am ready. Now it’s your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never.
You need me. You will need me. There’s no greater story than ours, that of man
and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story
of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the
future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my
man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for
him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared
happiness. I know... it’s you.
With Claire
Denis working for the final time as Wenders’ assistant director, the
closing title reads, “Dedicated to all the former angels, but especially to
Yasujirō, François, and Andrei.” That
would be Ozu, Truffaut, and Tarkovsky.
