Review of Wings of Desire (1987) by Cille I — 12 Dec 2009
Wow. This is a beautiful film on every level. The story, which deals with an angel longing to know what it is like to be human, is original and fascinating, and deals with big questions, such as what it means to be human.
I loved the film's vision of angels as silent witnesses, who stand near us and listen to our thoughts but never directly interfere. The simple image of the angels listening to various people produces some extremely poignant moments.
Bruno Ganz is great as our main angel, and Otto Sander is also extremely good as a more conventional, by-the-book angel. Solveig Dommartin's trapeze artist is a bit of an enigma even to herself. Peter Falk turns out to have one of his best parts ever as himself.
The cinematography is in crisp black-and-white whenever we are seeing things from the angels' point of view, and color the rest of the time. The camera work is phenomenal, swooping and gliding all over the city just like (you guessed it) an angel.
I can certainly see why Wim Wenders won the Cannes director award for this movie. The plot, such as it is, moves slowly, and the penultimate monologue by Dommartin is too long and too unrealistic coming from her character.
But this is such a moving, thought-provoking, and entrancing film that those quibbles hardly matter. I am awfully glad I saw this movie.
This review of Wings of Desire (1987) was written by Cille I on 12 Dec 2009.
Wings of Desire has generally received very positive reviews.
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