Wings of Desire reaction

Seeing this film again forced me to think about why I like it, what I see in it. I think my first exposure to it came through U2, way back in the early 90s. They put the song "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" on their Zooropa album, and the video featured the four of them as angels a la Wenders' angels. (The song itself was heard in Wenders' WoD sequel Faraway, So Close!) I still love (a lot of) U2('s music), but I was practically mainlining them at that point, so naturally I saw Wings of Desire.

Certainly it's not a particularly plot-driven movie. But then, anyone who's been paying attention to TNFN knows that's not a problem for me. Still, what does one answer when asked what this film is about?

It seems to me that, apart from the considerable aesthetic beauty of both the B&W and color cinematography, what is also beautiful and what lingers is the celebration of the importance of each human. God is distant (or at least out-of-frame) in the film, but each private emotion-wracked thought is felt by these angels who strive in their necessarily subtle way to bring comfort, or at the very least to bear witness. The love story between Damiel and Marion can strike the viewer as convincing or not; it's certainly very quickly sketched. But the success of that connection speaks (or at least tries to) of the abiding importance of love, the importance of romantic love even in the spiritual plane.

I don't think I'm done thinking about the film, though. Marion has gained a physical lover, and he may be the truest such she could ever have had, but in the process of gaining this new way of knowing one another, they've lost an intimacy they had before. Has Damiel acted selfishly? The final frames of the film are beautiful, as they show Damiel helping Marion in her acrobatic exercises, but they are also strikingly sad, as we see Damiel's friend Cassiel still in his B&W angelic existence watching them from the stairs, them in color, him in B&W. Damiel has abandoned his post, but Cassiel labors on, no doubt missing this companion with whom he once watched the continents ruled by animals, with whom he watched the first glimmerings of life emerge from the primordial soup. Will he remain ever thus? Will he follow his friend into mortality?

This reminds me of the last key pleasure of this film, and that is the way it awakens us to the joy of perception. Too often we grow used to the torrent of input our five (or more?) senses dump into our brain all day every day. But watching this film we are reminded of the beauty to be found even in the cold at our fingertips and the friction of rubbing our hands together, that first hot taste of coffee (ever or even of the morning), the beauty of a sky whether it be blue or foreboding purple-grey. We arrive at the end of this film hyper-sensitized anew, at least for a few moments or days (if we're lucky) to the sensual connection to our world that these bodies of ours provide us.

Savor it.