11.04.09
Films You Should See: Wings of Desire
Wim Wenders' masterpiece about melancholy angels in Berlin, Wings of Desire, is now available in a sumptuous new Criterion DVD, complete with exclusive extras and recreated in a brilliant new transfer.
Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), Wim Wenders' lyrical hymn to angels over Berlin, is one of the great movies about human empathy. In Wenders' wreck of a Berlin, split in two by the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall, angels are the great sympathizers. Looming in Henri Alekan's silvery black-and-white shots, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) have spent eternity in Berlin, clad in long black trenchcoats, strolling, wandering around the crumbling city, serving witness to the city's people. And that is, simply, what they do: they bear witness.
Alekan's gentle, precise camera slowly drifts throughout the city, stopping at a circus, the film set for a schlocky Nazi drama, through the windows of an apartment, the exhausted faces of the people on the train, the cacophony of thoughts in the library. Throughout it all, the history and hurt of Berlin's past and present weighs on the characters. There's something holy and precious in these first few scenes; Wenders and Peter Handke came up with beautiful elliptical poetry. You're in the shoes of the angels, bearing witness to humanity in a wholly new way. The angels listen and listen to people's thoughts. They have favorites, like the profound old man Homer (Curt Bois), who ruminates on the Berlin that was and the Berlin that will be. People can't see the angels. They provide comfort with an errant, unfelt hand of the shoulder, a lean of the head, their very presence.
When the angels find a slapdash local carnival, Damiel is gone. He falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, Marion (Solveig Donmartin), who dresses up as an angel and flies through the air for audiences made up of cow-eyed children. She likes Nick Cave, and she's lonely. Her world is one of color: glorious red dresses, a curtain of curly hair. As the love story between the angel and the trapeze artist dressed up as an angel develops, Wenders takes us around Berlin—to a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show in a ruined hotel, to a food truck with Peter Falk (whose presence in this film is simply a stroke of genius), to the beauty of a human body bending and folding, flying around the trapeze.
The film is a masterpiece. It grows richer with color and meaning with every viewing. The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, often screens the film during Christmastime, along with It's a Wonderful Life (unfortunately, it's not on the schedule for this December). That's where I first saw the film, and it's a grand place to bear witness: huddling into a warm theater, away from the blanket of snow, to watch angels, whimsy, and sympathy on the big screen. Wings of Desire is nothing more then a transcedent invitation to empathy.
What's amazing about the new Criterion DVD of Wings of Desire is that it has loads of extras and special features that deepen and expand on the root of the film and what makes it so memorable. There's a darling trailer for a "Wen Wunderts" (Wim Wenders) retrospective (for his films from 1967 to 1997), where Curt Bois walks in, asking "Why doesn't he [Wenders] shoot a comedy?" The small, older man (who must've been in his 90s when this was shot) goes on, "So you're telling me all your films are—"
And Wenders replies, "Deadly serious." While holding a sign that says WEN WUNDERTS!
Bois is cool with it, though: "Deadly serious stuff makes me laugh." He then tells Wenders about his comedy script, "The Passionate Witness." It's quite charming and funny. (The humor even translates! Somewhat.)
Of course, that feature only takes up two short minutes: there's a glorious documentary, The Angels Among Us, with Wenders and his primary Angels (Ganz and Sander), plus writer Handke, Falk (who is oh-so-American in comparison to all these Germans), and director Brad Siberling, who helmed the American remake of Wings of Desire, City of Angels. In the documentary, you get to hear more about what inspired Wenders in the first place, how the angels' looks shifted from classical/mythical angel regalia to their simple black trenchcoat, and what sort of writing Handke brought to the table: many, many gorgeously written monologues.
Criterion also provides background on Wings of Desire's legendary cinematographer, Henri Alekan, including a short interview and an excerpt from a documentary on the man (he is probably best known for shooting Jean Cocteau's 1941 Beauty and the Beast). Thomas Kinkade may have turned "painter of light" into an awful term, but to hear Alekan talk about how he uses light in his cinematography, well, it's eye-opening. There's also documentary footage of an old interview with Wenders, and another work, by Ganz and Sander, about the life of Curt Bois, who makes such an impression in the film as Homer.
Click here to read Roger Ebert's Great Movies entry on Wings of Desire.
Click here for more information, including some beautiful essays from Michael Atkinson and Wenders, on the Criterion edition of Wings of Desire.
Bonus video:
According to The New York Times Magazine feature on the Brooklyn band The Dirty Projectors, the song "Stillness is the Move," was deeply inspired by Wings of Desire. Fans of the film should be able to recognize the film's influence quite handily. To wit:
"For the lyrics to 'Stillness Is the Move,' Mr. Longstreth had Ms. Coffman watch the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire and write down lines of dialogue that intrigued her; other lyrics were drawn from an Excel spreadsheet of hundreds of pop clichés."
