Wings of desire (Wenders, 1987)

Listening to people's thoughts can be a very tiresome experience because they are so abstract and random. "Wings of desire" is a film that you either love or hate entirely based on this fact. It is a movie about 2 angels who watch the world and exchange their timeless observations in poetic conversations, that awe and amaze initially, but quickly become tiring and redundant to listen to because the film eventually becomes about nothing more than these observations and their careful deconstruction. The movie features either only internal monologues (which we listen to as the people speak them as their thoughts) or monologues amongst solitary characters. It also exists forever in a dream like trance state where the angels philosophize about a life they cannot lead as the people they meet (who cannot see them) philosophize about the life they live and what it feels like to be alive. It is poignantly conveyed to us that the angels, from time in memoriam, have desired the ability to enjoy the simple pleasures that we take for granted, like having weight or touching an apple and so on.

"Damiel: When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream? Isn't what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn't before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?"

Perhaps I am too young to appreciate the art of the film and its poetry, which there is a lot of. But as a film, it is not very watchable because nothing really happens, till the third act when one of the angels contemplates giving up his ethereal status for the love of a woman. Was loosely the inspiration behind the similarly themed (and slow moving) American remake "City of angels".

Rating: 3.5/5

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