Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Onicia B — 27 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 plot 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. 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 began to contemplate transforming from an angel to a human.

Overall the movie Wings of Desire is difficult to understand due to the techniques used throughout the film which fail to add any significance. 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 their thoughts. This method of narration reveals the character's thoughts immediately, with this technique it makes it easier for the viewer to understand the character's feelings and emotions since they are given directly through dialog. The characters for the most part speak German and the audio is mostly in German. This makes the movie 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. In addition, the film mixed black and white with color and the background music in some scenes fails to match the tone and mood of the scene because it is not the genre the viewer expects it to be. The movie exhibited poor organization of scenes and included multiple random scenes that show different aspects of the film but lack logical order. This method of revealing plot points creates frustration because the viewer sees multiple scenes that are unrelated and tries to connect them even though they might only be loosely related to the plot. The angels in the film do not look or act like stereotypical angels. Instead the main two angels are portrayed as middle-aged adults who wear dark colored trench coats, have long hair and act human. This portrayal 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 that they are angels.