388 - Wings of Desire, West Germany/France, 1987. Dir. Wim Wenders.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

388 - Wings of Desire, West Germany/France, 1987.  Dir. Wim Wenders.

For He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. - Psalm 91:11.

Damiel is an angel assigned to Berlin.

He keeps a diary.  He pays particular attention to the children.  He writes down what life is like for them.  How they are different from adults.  Closer to Heaven.

In fact, children can see Damiel.  Adults cannot.  When children look up and see him on the spire of a tall building, they smile.  They know.

Damiel watches over people with compassion.  Loving them.  Protecting them.  Comforting them.

They still have free will.  When a man decides to jump off a building to commit suicide, Damiel cannot stop him.  But Damiel is there.  Consoling.  In the case of another suicidal man, on the train platform, he is more successful.

Sometimes the people listen to the still small voice.  Sometimes, even when they do not, Damiel is able to help them somehow anyway.

Cassiel is Damiel's partner.  The two of them work together.

A woman rides in an ambulance on the way to Delivery.  Damiel and Cassiel ride with her.  They listen to her heart as she speaks to her baby.  They listen to her husband's heart as he speaks to his wife.

A prostitute stands on the side of the road, trying to make a living.  Damiel and Cassiel stand by her.  Available.

A man feels rejected by his wife.  Damiel and Cassiel are there for him.  Assuaging.

A woman works as a trapeze artist in the circus.  Damiel . . . well, Damiel falls in love with her.

Can he do that?

Has it ever happened before?

Damiel and Cassiel, like all angels, have been here since the beginning of time.  Since before Berlin was a city.  Before the birth of man.

They have worked this spot throughout all of human history.  Imagine how many generations of people they have seen.

How could these feelings now suddenly arise inside of him?

Damiel tells Cassiel that he would like to know what it means to be human.

To see color.  To feel with the skin.  To feel with the heart.  To drink coffee.  To love.  To bleed.

Marion, the trapeze artist, trains as Damiel watches her.  Sitting invisibly on his perch.  Her trainer is guiding her to imagine she is an angel.  Imagine your wings.  Imagine your weightlessness.  Imagine that you can fly.

And as he watches, Damiel imagines that he is human.  Imagines his weightfulness.  Imagines that he can walk.  Imagines that he can feel the dirt between his toes.

Peter Falk is Peter Falk.  He is coming to Berlin to make a movie.  The kids know him as Columbo.  He talks about how important wardrobe is.  He mentions that Columbo did not wear a hat, and that he wore his own coat. 

And somehow when Damiel stops by a food stand, where Peter Falk is waiting in line to order, Peter can sense his presence.  Peter does not see him but he knows that he is there.  He talks to him.  He talks to him confidently.  Comfortably.

Perhaps we will find out why.  And how.

Remember Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete (1946).  We watched it last year.  Wim Wenders has brought on board its cinematographer, Henri Alekan--forty-one years later!--to give Wings of Desire its mysterious, dreamlike, otherwordly look.

http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/003-la-belle-et-la-bete-beauty-and.html

Henri Alekan was born in 1909.  He started working in 1931.  He worked steadily for 62 years until 1993.  He died in 2001.

The camera moves effortlessly on a gimbal from room to room, reminding us of Max Ophuls. 

http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/091-la-ronde-1950-france-dir-max-ophuls.html

It is as if the apartments of Rear Window (1954) were made three-dimensional.  Or in this case, as seen through the eyes of the angels, four-dimensional.

This is a film about seeing.  About watching through eyes of love.  Eyes of grace.

Some call it a city symphony to Berlin.  Made a couple years before the Wall fell.  It is silent and filled with dialogue.  It is black and white yet gives way to color.  And when it is black and white, it feels more like silver.  The film comforts just as the angels do.

It transcends theology.  One allows it its fiction.  It is not a statement about the nature of real angels or their capacities or desires.  Indeed, the real Heaven is where the explosion of the senses takes place, as we are now in the shadowlands, seeing through a glass darkly.

But this film absolutely affirms the beauty and eternal value of man.  The only creature made in the image of God.  The only creature given freedom, will power.  The only creature granted salvation, redemption, the Gospel, the Holy Spirit.

Which things the angels desire to look into.

Watch this movie.  And then see if you can identify a film in which humans are portrayed as being so loved.