Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Christian V — 06 Oct 2014

Eleanor Roosevelt once said "The purpose of life to live it, taste it, and experience it to the utmost to reach out eagerly and without fear for never and richer experience." This quotes closely relates to the theme of the Franco- German romantic film, Wings of Desire. Wings of Desire was directed by Wim Wenders and is considered by many a great movie. This film received many awards and I see why. Some of those awards were Best Director Award, Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film , National Society of Film Critics Award, and Best Cinematography for a German Film.

This romantic film closely shadows the lives of two angels Damiel, who is played by Bruno Ganz and Cassiel, who is played by Otto Sanders. These two angels wander around the area of West Berlin and try to console the people of this town. Overall this movie to me is quite good. This movie tells a beautiful tale of love and shows and appreciation of life and time.

The theme of this movie is learning to appreciate life and how awesome life is.

The director intends for the viewer to take from this film live your life while you're living because one day you will not be able to and you can not get back those days so take advantage of them while they are yours. Damiel who was once an angel craves to be a human after falling in love with a woman. Thankfully in the end he gets the chance to be human again and he and the woman fall deeply in love.

However, there were some parts of the movie that didn't really hold me and manipulated my brain to believe this movie was quite boring, which is not the case. The beginning of this movie had a very slow start, which I helped developed the mood for the audience. Most negative reviewers of this movie might be used to American films where things start fast and they get to the point. I felt this movie needed the slow developed and would have lost its touch without the slow beginning. The pace of this movie really relates to patience angels have.

Parts of the movie that did bore me was the constant walking around. The angels walked around and just looked and heard the thoughts of others and touched them. That does follow my idea of an angel, but I wish the angels were more distinguished. The angels in this movie wore clothes just like humans of this time. The fact that angel wanted to be human was at first a surprise but I realized that angels can only watch humans live life and I could see where the jealousy would eventually build up.

The other part of the movie I didn't like was the cinematography. The movie was mostly black and white, which I didn't like. However, it had its moments of color when focusing in on a human. This idea was quite clever in a way if you think of it as the angels had the dull boring lives and hovered over human never able to grasp their feeling of life. While the humans had this vibrant life and could feel the wind in their hair and come home from a long day of work, kick their shoes off and wiggle their toes and relax.

Even with this movie's few flaws in my opinion the movie still did a good job of portraying the dull lives of the angels Damiel and Cassiel. I'd give this movie 4 out of 5 stars.