Romancefest 3: Sadiefest - Wings of Desire

Although there is a romance between a man and a woman central to WINGS OF DESIRE, it is really a romance between God and his creation, or more specifically, one angel and mankind. This famous Wim Wenders film is the tale of a world in which unseen angels observe humanity, only occasionally intervening, but watching and listening.

Bruno Ganz stars as an angel observing Berlin in the then-contemporary mid-80s, when the wall still divided the city. Otto Sander is another angel, and together, the two silently float above the city, perch on building tops and statues, descend to the streets below, into libraries and night clubs, and listen to the pensive, frightened, optimistic, pessimistic, soul-searching and sometimes oblivious thoughts of the humans around them.

A plot slowly begins to develop as Ganz finds himself yearning to become human, moved to experience all he observes, and, most specifically, to meet a circus acrobat (Solveig Dommartin) he has fallen in love with. This plot is never forced onto the movie, however, and its developments come late in the running time and almost as an afterthought. The majority of the film is spent in a quiet, reverent, meditative, and elegiac state, simply observing little moments in the lives of humans, and how they add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Otto Sander is also on hand as another angel, and together, with Ganz, a wide variety of subjects are followed and observed, including an old poet (Curt Bois) who ruminates on his own war-torn past, the state of his divided city, cut in two both geographically and by the passage of time, and the nature of peace and violence in the big picture.

The angels also meet Peter Falk, playing himself, who is in town to shoot a movie, and seems to be more wise to the presence of the angels than anyone else in town. Except the children, of course. But then, Falk always had a child-like glimmer in his eye.

The film is shot mostly in beautiful, dreamy black and white with the exception of a few key scenes in full color. One scene, in particular, sticks out in my mind, in which we observe a seemingly gray and drab laundromat in black and white only to find out it is shockingly painted in bright, happy tones when we switch to color.

Similar to masters like Malick and Kubrick, Wenders is able to transcend the mundane and ordinary to reach sublimely spiritual heights with WINGS OF DESIRE by counter-intuitively focusing on the very specific, tiny details of life. That's when you know a movie is truly great -- when it says a lot with very little.