Wings of Desire
Composite Score: 84.43
Starring: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Curt Bois, Peter Falk, and Nick Cave
Director: Wim Wenders
Writers: Wim Wenders and Peter Handke
Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Box Office: $3.47 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Wings of Desire is Wim Wenders’s film about a pair of angels who watch over the city of Berlin and their distant interactions with the humans living there, as one becomes enamored with the idea of leaving his spiritual life behind. The film follows Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) as they traverse the city and listen to the thoughts of its various denizens – some of them uplifting, some tragic, and some deeply insightful. Damiel’s work takes him to the circus where he begins to fall for the beautiful trapeze artist, Marion, leading him on a journey of self-rediscovery. Cassiel on the other hand finds himself following a forlorn storyteller, nearing the end of his life, and begins questioning the point of existence – both of humans and himself. Wenders’s film offers much for its audience to contemplate in his melancholic fantasy, exploring the depths of what it means to be human and to love and to live, all through the supposedly unbiased eyes of our guardian angels.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Much of this film is dominated by voiceovers and perceived thoughts, making its story fall very much to the background for most of its runtime. Audiences going into Wings of Desire hoping for a grand love story between an angel and human or a sweeping exploration of spiritual warfare or something grandly fantastical will be sorely disappointed with the grounded and human experience that the film offers. It doesn’t want to look too broadly at the rules of the world that its story inhabits, choosing instead to just take out a day in the lives of these people and angels, showing key decision points as opposed to explaining everything that led to this moment or everything that comes after. It’s self-contained in a way that not every viewer will enjoy, but those who give it a chance without asking it to be something it isn’t will probably still be pleased with the outcome.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
A big part of what has made Wings of Desire one of the all-time greats is the sensation of wonder that it manages to create in its audience despite some fairly simple production design and story work. By keeping everything the angels perceive in black and white, there is a sense that everything is outside of time and less than real even as you hear the thoughts of real people, many of which echo thoughts that we ourselves have on a regular basis. The shift that comes when the audience gets to perceive things from a human perspective (viewing the world in color) is jarring in a way that the watchers feel woken up to the real world and reminded of their own participation in the world on screen. The inclusion of Peter Falk as himself only serves to amplify this sensation, by anchoring the entire story in an even more familiar reality. By the end, you want to know so much more about the world that Wenders has created and that Damiel and Cassiel inhabit, but you also find yourself overjoyed to live in the world that they can only hope to fully perceive one day. It is a film that celebrates human existence as only a film about the spiritual things of life can, and if you watch it, I think you’ll be better for it.
Wenders invites audiences into an engaging celebration of the human race through his story of angels and humans and life and its struggles and celebrations that coalesce to make the complete film that is Wings of Desire, a film worthy of a spot among the Greatest Films of All Time. Its grounded fantasy can be difficult to grasp for audiences hoping for one kind of angelic/spiritual tale, but its melancholically uplifting tale ends up working in its own way. It is currently available to stream via Max or the Criterion Collection for anyone looking to give it a shot.
