Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Nathan L — 21 Oct 2018

The 1987 film Wings of Desire also known as Der Himmel über Berlin, translated to The Heaven Over Berlin focuses on the daily lives of two angels during a brief window of their existence. It is directed by Wim Wenders and stars Bruno Ganz as Damiel, Solveig Dommartin as Marion, Otto Sanders as Cassiel, and Peter Falk as himself. The film is set in the city of Berlin during the 1980s and mixes the use of color and black and white filming to convey perspectives and emotions throughout the plot. Although the film gives little insight into the plot and includes scenes that seem to be random to the audience. Overall the movie is difficult to understand due to the techniques used throughout the film which fail to add any significance.

The plot of Wings of Desire outlines the lives of two angels Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sanders) who stay around the city of Berlin and have never experienced what it is like to be human. The job of the angels is to comfort humans during difficult times and to witness and observe events that involve humans. Because they are angels, Damiel and Cassiel cannot be seen by adults and are unable to experience emotion but are able to understand the thoughts and feelings of humans. The angel Damiel observes and falls in love with a circus performer named Marion (Solveig Dommartin) who is traveling through Berlin with the Circus Alekan. After observing Marion, the angel Damiel begins to contemplate transforming from an angel to a human. After he becomes human, Damiel talks to Peter Falk for the first time as a human where Falk reveals that he was once an angel also. Later in the film Damiel meets Marion at a concert where it is shown that Cassiel has remained an angel.

The film uses nontraditional methods of narration instead of having narration through characters or an omniscient and omnipresent third person narrator. In the film the narration is composed of people's thoughts transformed into words. In the movie the people rarely speak actual words. Instead the majority of the dialog is the people's thoughts. This type of narration has negative and positive effects on the overall movie and how the viewers understand the plot. The bad side of using this method is that it reveals the character's thoughts immediately instead of through conversations and it does not leave as much ability for characters to deceive others without the knowledge of the viewer. Although with this technique it made it easier to understand the character's feelings and emotions since they are given directly because the words of the characters are their thoughts. The movie could have used it as an opportunity to make the dialog in the film one language because they are thoughts and not spoken words.

In this film multiple languages were used throughout the movie including both the written and spoken scenes. The movie is mostly in German but does include some English, the characters for the most part speak in German and the audio is also mostly in German. The film has subtitles that are in English along with certain scenes and the ending credits. The film is difficult to understand by someone who is not fluent in German because they have to read the subtitles and subsequently focus less on the movie's picture and what the characters are actually doing. The film also mixes black and white with color to show perspective. Black and white is used when the scene is shown in the perspective of the angels and color is shown in the human's perspective. This change in color seems to be unnecessary because it does not alter the way the scenes are interpreted. In addition to the mixing of black and white to color the background music in some scenes fails to match the tone and mood of the scene that it is played in. It is not uncommon in the movie for background music to be a different genre than what a viewer would expect it to be.

The movie exhibited poor organization of scenes and included multiple random scenes. Scenes in the movie show different aspects of the film but lack logical order. In the movie a scene will be played about one aspect and then it will jump to another scene that is unrelated to the last and is about something totally different. In addition, the film includes multiple random scenes. It shows scenes that do not fit into the plot and are in no method attempted to fit into the plot and the film never returns to them to give a conclusion. For example, one scene shows a pregnant woman and her husband in the back of an ambulance when she is about to give birth. The scene lasts a few seconds and then moves on to another scene that is totally unrelated to it and the movie never returns to that scene or characters. The movie also plays the audio from one scene in the background of another, for example in one scene the picture is an aerial view of the city of Berlin while the audio is that of the people in the ambulance. In the beginning of the movie the scenes are random and do not lead directly into the plot of the film. The films approach to revealing the topic takes more time than most other films. The film uses a technique that indirectly leads into the plot through the use of multiple scenes. These scenes appear to be random although some of them lead into a vague theme. This technique frustrates the viewers because they do not understand the plot since the scenes do not directly give information to the viewers. This method of revealing plot points creates frustration because the viewer sees multiple scenes that are totally unrelated and therefore the viewer tries to connect them even though they might only be loosely related to the plot.

In the film the angels do not look or act like stereotypical angels. Instead Wings of Desire portrays the main two as middle-aged adults who wear dark colored trench coats, have long hair and act human. The angels Damiel and Cassiel do not appear similar to most Hollywood movies' depiction of angels which might typically wear white and fly, instead Wings of Desire makes the angels look like and act like humans for the most part. This has obvious disadvantages because it makes it more difficult for viewers to pick up on the fact that they are angels because it takes the plot a considerable amount of time to give enough hints to remove all doubt the viewer has that they are angels. Throughout Wings of Desire the first time that it is revealed that they are angels is near the beginning of the movie when Damiel is shown with wings. The plot of the movie is not direct and forces the viewer to guess about what is going on. It does indirectly reveal that the main characters are angels and that the angels cannot be seen by adults but can be seen by young children and that their purpose is to comfort humans during difficult times although they cannot change the outcomes of events. It was shown that the angels cannot be seen by humans when the angels lean on them and comfort them during their times of need. It shows that young children can see the angels during the library and airplane scenes when Damiel smiled at them and they smile back and when they looked at each other as if they can see him. The plot does take a considerable amount of time to reveal these aspects of the angels to the viewers. Because of this technique viewers get bored because the movie fails to produce scenes that reveal information about the angels efficiently enough to keep interest.

The movie Wings of Desire directed by Wim Wenders uses non-traditional techniques to establish a plot and introduce characters. Wings of Desire is a story about Damiel and Cassiel and outlines the life of angels and tells the story about Damiel's motivation to become human. The movie uses non-traditional narration methods, mixes black and white along with color, uses multiple languages, has background music that does fit the mood of the scenes, angels that do not fit stereotypes and scenes that are random and scattered. Because the movie uses these techniques it makes it difficult to follow and understand and it frustrates the viewers because the techniques make it more difficult by purposely taking measures to distract the viewer.