Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Shaverray — 29 Oct 2018

Wings of Desire is a perfectly mediocre film. This movie is particular in its audience in that those who enjoy sophistication and deep thinking will very much enjoy it. However those who enjoy action and adrenaline boosting adventure, this film is not for you.

Profound thought is involved because the angles in "Wings of Desire" are an enigma, they are depicted as pony tailed men with long trench coats and are not perfected as a stereotypical angel.

Damiel specifically comes to conclusions that being human is better than being an angel, which is puzzling. He falls in love with a woman named Marion who is a trapeze artist. He is so mesmerized by her abilities that make her vulnerable and angel like that he wants to experience love.

His interests to be a human are made evident at the beginning of the film when he is seated in a car with Cassiel. He explains how he wants to feel the wind and wants to be greeted, he is tired of hovering above people and living for eternity.

Problems arise because there is no plot to the movie and often confusing on how and why certain events take place. Examples can be shown when they randomly switch to long segments of the angels hearing thought with no real correlation behind it.

Almost as to fill in time for the movie. It also seems odd and peculiar of the angel being a perfect match for the trapeze artist, seemingly much older and with the way he approaches her at the bar it wouldn't seem practical for them to have such a strong bond.

The dialogue in the film also has an uneasy presence due to it only being the angels to interact in the beginning and the cliche lines that are filtered through. For example at the end of the film the trapeze artist seems to have a whole fabricated line explaining her "lonely" situation; however, in the beginning of the film dialogue was very scarce, also her expression on wanting to be loved can be seen as cliche.

The audience is also expecting more of an adventure and spectacle to the piece where Damiel becomes human. He stresses his desire to be a human and feel what a human feels; even though, we are shown bits of him enjoying mortality we don't sense the full aura of him feeling pain, suffering, or other spectrums of the human condition.

It is understood that he has studied humanity since the beginning of time and can somewhat understand what it is like, but it isn't made clear if he truly is immersed in society. Since I enjoy movies that deal with thought as well as an action packed adventure I would rate this movie as a 5/10.