Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Jaelin W — 07 Oct 2014

A movie about all the little things, Wings of Desire is a film filled with different aspects and views on life. From the beginning the audience is captivated by the poem, "When the child was a child", and continues to try and make a connection with the significance that the poem has, as it plays only in certain scenes. This is a very complex film for its time.

Through the movie we are chauffeured by Angles, Damiel and Cassiel, as they take the audience through what eternity is as an angel. Very impressive acting throughout the entire film, as the adults seem unaware of the angels among them. This film is taking place in Berlin, which was a depressing city in the late 1800's, but a perfect place to film a movie of hope and gratefulness. With angels all about, what does this story entail? The plot begins with the Angel Damiel and Cassiel, we are allowed to see life through their perspective. Damiel however, experiences a woman of gold, and even though he only sees her in black and white, he knows there is something special about her. Wenders (the director) also slips an old storyteller in the movie signifying his love for good stories and how rare it is these days to come across one. The movie is so advanced, with plots of all sorts of human trials going on, all supervised, but never affected by the angel's presence. And these are no ordinary angels, no wings or halos or even glow, instead they walk around Berlin in their long trench coats with slick backed hair.

Appearing as a regular human.

The director also allows us to realize how we take little things like color, grass, and even blood for granted, as he shows us that the angel cannot experience color or even time. Majority of the movie is played through the angels eyes, which is black and white. It makes us want to see color and realize just how boring black and white can be. Until Damiel experiences a desire to love a beautiful young trapeze artist, who he watches day to day, and even though she cannot see him she knows she can feel something. As weird as that sounds, something else weird happens when Damiel falls from the sky of Berlin. He then realizes now that he can experience life. Coffee, cigarettes, love, color, everything that he so desperately wanted.

This is a great movie but when it first starts it is easy to form the opinion that you don't like it or it makes no sense, but as you begin to give it a chance and keep along with the subtitles, Wenders slowly proves why his film is worth the watch. Movies today do not really compare, directors of today focus more on being "typical" which really is a waste of money. When viewing "Wings of Desire" from the start we are intrigued by the title and then when we see how Wenders was able to work in so many different scenarios of an angel's life, we realize how genius it was.

What seemed like it would be a movie about a war turned out to be completely different. There were times where the film got boring and draggy. It was very slow paced with classical music in some scenes and rock star music in others which was quite disturbing. The director should have dealt with the sound and the way the music came out to maybe soften it, but maybe he was trying to make it as if this is what the angels heard and maybe the angels where disturbed to. It made me look at the way we go through life and how silly we seem and how quick we are to push everything else to the side only to please ourselves. It was inspirational but also somewhat mind-blowing, that someone could even think this movie out in the late 1800s. There are mixed emotions about this film, not sure if the director wanted us to reevaluate our lives but it is definitely an intricate film.