Wim Wenders directed Wings of Desire, a meditative romantic fantasy, which he co-wrote with Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger.
The film concerns invisible, immortal angels in Berlin, who walk around and listen to the thoughts and feelings of its human inhabitants, while comforting those that are alienated and distressed.
Even though the city is densely populated, many people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones.
One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist, played by Solveig Dommartin. The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures, like enjoying food, touching loved ones.
Wender was inspired by the art that depicts angels as visible around West Berlin, then encircled by the Berlin Wall.
The film was shot by Henri Alekan in both color and a sepia-toned black-and-white, with the latter representing the world as seen subjectively by the angels.
In a Berlin divided by the Berlin Wall, two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, watch the city, unseen and unheard by its human inhabitants. They observe and listen to the thoughts of Berliners, including a pregnant woman in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, a young prostitute standing by a busy road, and a broken man who feels betrayed by his wife. Their raison d’être is, as Cassiel says, to “assemble, testify, preserve” reality. Damiel and Cassiel have always existed as angels; they were in Berlin before it was a city, and before there were any humans.
Among the Berliners they encounter in their wanderings is an old man, Homer, who dreams of an “epic of peace”. Cassiel follows the old man as he looks for the then-demolished Potsdamer Platz in an open field, and finds only the graffiti-covered Wall.
Although Damiel and Cassiel are observers, visible only to children, and incapable of any interaction with the physical world, Damiel falls in love with a lonely circus trapeze artist named Marion. She lives by herself in a caravan in West Berlin, until she receives the news that her Circus Alekan will be closing down. Depressed, she dances alone to the music of Crime & the City Solution, and drifts through the city.
Meanwhile, actor Peter Falk arrives in West Berlin to make a film about the city’s Nazi past. Falk was once an angel, but tired of always observing and never experiencing, he renounced his immortality to become a participant,
Also growing weary of infinity, Damiel’s longs for the genuineness and limits of human existence. He meets Marion in a dream, and is surprised when Falk senses his presence and tells him about the pleasures of human life.
Damiel is finally persuaded to shed his immortality, and experience life for the first time. He now bleeds, sees colors, tastes food and drinks coffee.
Meanwhile, Cassiel taps into the mind of a youngster, who’s just about to commit suicide by jumping off a building. Cassiel tries to save the young man, but he is unable, which leaves him tormented by the experience. Sensing Cassiel’s presence, Falk reaches out to him as he had to Damiel, but Cassiel is unwilling to follow their example.
Eventually, Damiel meets the trapeze artist Marion at a bar during a concert by Nick Cave. She speaks about finally finding a love that is serious and can make her feel more complete. The next day, Damiel considers how the time spent with Marion taught him how to feel amazed, and how to gain the kind of knowledge that no angel is capable of achieving.
Critical Status
For Wings of Desire, Wenders won the Best Director kudo at both the Cannes Film Fest and European Film Awards.
The film was a critical and financial success, and academics have interpreted it as a statement of the importance of cinema, libraries, the circus, German unity, the New Age.
It was followed by a sequel, Faraway, So Close!, released in 1993. City of Angels, a U.S. remake, was released in 1998.
In 1990, several critics named Wings of Desire as one of the best films of the 1980s.
Cast
Bruno Ganz as Damiel
Solveig Dommartin as Marion
Otto Sander as Cassiel
Curt Bois as Homer
Peter Falk as Der Filmstar (the film star)
Hans-Martin Stier as Der Sterbende (the dying man) (as Hans Martin Stier)
Elmar Wilms as Ein trauriger Mann (a sad man)
Sigurd Rachman as Der Selbstmörder (the suicide)
Beatrice Manowski as Das Strichmädchen (the young prostitute)
