Wings of Desire Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
Ever wonder what it’s like to be an Angel? In Wings of Desire you’re immortal, but confined to a half-reality. You can see and hear reality, but you cannot feel it. So all you can do is wander the world watching it change. Be an angel and watch Wings of Desire here (rent of buy on Amazon).
Why Watch Wings of Desire?
- To see Berlin before the end of the Cold War, complete with Berlin Wall
- Because every line is quotable – it’s a philosophical muser’s paradise
- To live like an angel (although it’s not as heavenly as you might think)
- Because Wim Wenders won Best Director for this film at Cannes and it has a beautiful soundtrack.
The Breakdown
An eye opens and cuts to a sweeping aerial shot of Berlin. The eye belongs to Damiel, a winged angel, and the aerial shot is his view of Berlin from the top of one of the cities highest monuments. The only people that see him perched at the top of the building are a few passing children who stare at him in awe.
Damiel and the other angels wander the city invisibly. They cannot talk to humans and they cannot be seen by humans, but they can hear all of their thoughts. Therefore, all they can do is wander the human world as observers.
The director (Wim Wenders) portrays their wandering with extreme melancholy. Firstly, he shows them trying to help people in vain, like a man who commits suicide. Secondly, he shows their lives in black and white whilst the Berliners they listen and watch are shown in vibrant colour. By creating their lives as a half life (without feeling, colour, and action) it makes us sympathize with their desire to be human.
Portrayal of Berlin
Wings of Desire was shot in the decade before the reunification of Germany. Therefore you will see the Berlin Wall and East Germany looming in the distance. The melancholic lives of the Angels are a reflection of the melancholy in Berlin, a city that still hasn’t recovered from the the Second World War.
There are reminders of the war placed throughout the film, from the actors dressed as Nazis and Jews on a nearby film set to the Berlin Wall. However, the most prominent example of the wars devastation on life in Berlin is the fate of Potsdamer Plaza.
A storytelling character aptly named Homer walks through the no-man’s land wasteland by the Berlin wall where Potsdamer Plaza used to be located. He reminisces about the Plaza when it was full of life. Before the war, it was full of friendly people and tradesmen. But later Nazi flags filled the square and the people became unfriendly. And now it’s just part of an empty wasteland that runs alongside the Berlin wall, with no life at all.
Conclusion
Wings of Desire is a beautifully melancholic film that meditates on the plight of humanity in the 20th century. In the political volatility today, this film is particularly relevant. It’s almost a warning of what could happen if we let love abandon us; we’d become Angels wandering the wastelands.
For another great German film of almost epic proportions I strongly recommend watching Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun. It charts 20th century German history through the stoic Maria Braun, who is widowed as her husband fights in WW2.
If you love the melancholic philosophical musings I also recommend watching The Seventh Seal (rent or buy on Amazon), the story of a knight who is stalked by death.