Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Caroline F — 04 Oct 2014

The movie, Wings of Desire, was a very interesting movie, that portrayed different abstract ideas, along with a very good story. This movie was portrayed very differently from other movies of its time period, maybe since it was filmed in Germany which is a different culture from American culture. There are certain aspects about this movie that are different, some in good ways others in bad ways, but from things like how it was filmed in black and white, or how the way they structured the flow of the movie. Though this movie is quite different from other movies, but it is a very very good movie and would make my list of top ten movies.

One thing that I really liked about this movie was the way it was filmed. Even though it was filmed in black and white and would occasionally switch to color, I really enjoyed the concept behind it saying that that when it was filmed in black and white was when you were viewing life through the angles and when it was in color you were watching the movie through people. Another thing is that it seemed it was filmed with aerial shots over Berlin, to me this was implying that this mean the angels were watching over us. In general the camera work seemed to well enough, their was not any crazy explosions or CGI, it just seemed it was very simple but it does not hurt the movie in any way.

Wings of Desire was mainly filmed in German with only one character who spoke English, so the acting was not affected for its very hard to tell good or bad acting without knowing the language since you can read so much from different tones and body language. The fact that it was written in German may bother the viewer, but if someone does not like to read then they will not like it. The story of the movie was very good, but it really wasn't anything special it just seemed like your average story without any major plot twists or anything like that. The flow of the movie moves very fast were you really have to pay attention to subtle details and hints. Some may say that it may be a little hard to follow because of it moving so fast on top of it being in German, but if you are able to follow it then it truly is a great movie.

One thing that Wings of Desire did a great job of is that it had allot of interesting concepts and ideas mainly including metaphors and symbolism. For example in the movie it showed how the angles would read peoples minds and it would go from person to person each one thinking out loud, most of them talking about their problems through day to day life. With this you can say that you are not the only one who has problems, everyone does and it may seem like their lives are perfect from the outside but in reality they aren't. It also showed us how even though we may have are problems it seems that their is something that is always helping us, something that we do not know about guiding us and helping us through our day to day life. One message that this movie sends out is that in order to find happiness you must appreciate the smaller things in life, one way it showed this was they showed a group of people who looked to be poor with nothing, but they were sitting around a fire laughing and joking implying that they were truly happy even though they had nothing.

Wings of Desire demonstrated allot of aspects of a great movie with its fantastic camera work to it deeper messages within that you have to uncover yourself. One thing this movie does is that it was simple, it did not have fancy explosions or action scenes to try and keep you hooked, it was able to do this by just simply being a good movie which is what in my opinion a movie should do. It has allot of aspects that demonstrate it to being a great movie and I would highly recommend this movie to many people if they wanted to watch what a movie should truly be.