“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?”
As with many great stories, the film dramatises different
realms or levels of existence. The film is about angels, specifically Damiel
(Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), who are watching over Berlin, often in
a caring capacity. The angels occupy another realm, which is communicated to us
by slowly gliding camerawork (courtesy of cinematographer Henri Alekan), aerial
shots of Berlin, an orchestral soundtrack (by Jürgen Knieper)
and black and white imagery.
Damiel faces a dilemma. He is an angel but wishes, as we
find out early in the film, to “enter the history of the world”, to live and be
finite, to sense and love and feel pain. We learn that as angels they live eternally.
They can observe every facet of the world and are all-knowing, but are
disconnected from the limited, sensual and profane world of manifested life.
In an early scene, the angels Damiel and Cassiel are in a
stationary car, calmly recounting their observations of Berlin, as though they
had done this many times before.
Cassiel:
“Today, on the Lilienthaler Chaussee, a man walks slowly,
and looks over his shoulder into space. At post office 44, someone who wants to
put an end it to it today has stuck collectors stamps on his farewell letters,
a different one on each, then he spoke English with an American soldier, for
the first time since his school days, fluently. In the hills, an old man was
reading The Odyssey to a child, and the young listener stopped blinking his
eyes.
And what do you have to tell?
Damiel:
“A passer-by, in the rain, folded her umbrella, and was
drenched. A school boy described to his teacher how a fern grows out of the
earth, and astounded the teacher. A blind woman who groped for her watch,
feeling my presence”
During the next lines of this scene we learn of Damiel’s
dilemma, as he states:
“Sometimes I’m fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of
hovering above, I’d like to feel a weight grow in me, to end the infinity and
tie me to earth. I’d like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say “now”,
and no longer “forever” and “eternity”.
No, I don’t have to beget a child or plant a tree. But it
would be rather nice, coming home after a long day, to feed the cat, to have a
fever, to be excited not only by the mind, but, at last, by a meal, by the line
of a neck, by an ear. To lie, through one’s teeth! As you’re walking, to feel
your bones moving along. To guess, instead of always knowing. Or at last to feel
how it is to take your shoes off under a table, to wriggle your toes barefoot”
The realm of manifested life is characterised, prominently,
by desire. Desire arguably shapes most of what
humans do and think. The desire to love and to be loved. The desire for carnal
pleasures. In most Buddhist thought, desire creates suffering and life is
defined as suffering. Thus desire is viewed negatively and something to avoid. But desire, for me, is not something to avoid, but something to be
apprehended accurately. Desire is multi-faceted and beautiful; pain, love, happiness, longing,
connection, suffering. I think this point is expressed in the film too.
Essential to Wings of
Desire is romantic love. Part of Damiel’s wish to enter history is his
longing for a woman, a trapeze artist named Marion. This longing is expressed
in the film, structurally, by the transition from black and white to colour.
Black and white represents the eternal angelic realm. When we find Damiel observing
Marion, there are moments where the film shifts to colour. The full shift to
colour occurs when Damiel emerges into the world
of life.
Marion, like Damiel, is also longing. When she finds Damiel
in a dream she knows that she belongs with him. Her need for him and his need
for her helps the film define human life, which is based on desire (or need)
and connection. Marion says to Damiel “You need me. You will need me”.
Marion’s words to Damiel near the end of the film are very telling:
Marion’s words to Damiel near the end of the film are very telling:
“At last it’s becoming serious. We are now the times. Not only
the whole town, but the whole world is taking part in our decision. We are now
more than us two. We incarnate something. We’re representing the people now. And
the whole place is full of those people dreaming the same dream. I am ready”
After longing and thinking, Marion is ready to take her
decision, to be serious, to embrace life. In doing so, she incarnates the world and its
capacity to create. Her's and Damiel’s union encapsulates all unions; they
are embodying and expressing every act of love, “We are now more than us two”.
A lot more could be said about Wings of Desire, in terms of its historical references, use of music and its connections
with other films and styles. Maybe another time!
“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?”
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