wings of desire (w&d wenders, w peter handke, richard reitinger)

Various thoughts occur after watching Wenders’ film for the first time.

1. Berlin

Wings of Desire was released in 1987 - filmed in the closing era of the Berlin wall, which features prominently. There’s a remarkable sequence where an old man is accompanied by an angel as he stumbles through the wasteland which used to be Potsdamer Platz (and would soon become again). There’s also archive footage of Berlin destroyed during the war. (Which did indeed bring to my mind my grandmother and great-grandparents and what they lived through). I visited Berlin two or three times as a child. Hazy memories of deserted railway tracks, which lead nowhere and were a fine playground; crossing Checkpoint Charlie; the constant sense of a city which harboured a clear and present physical threat, articulated by the wall. All of which is incidental, but related to the fact that Berlin contained a peculiar energy. West Berlin was a bubble, a dreamspace, suspended in the aspic of communism. Wenders film represents that limbo with flair. The monuments which no longer carry their intended weight, and have become a resting place for angels. The wastelands, made for circuses and reflection. The faded glory of clubs which ooze post-punk decadence; punk being the noise that empires make when they are hollowed out, leaving an empty shell where people can scream with fury or delight. Wings of Desire is very much a companion piece to Żuławski’s Possession or Bowie’s Low. 

2 Nick Cave

Who should wander into this dreamscape but the youthful magi himself, Nick Cave. I played the song he and the Seeds sing in the film (From Her to Eternity) on the jukebox in Fenix the other day and my companions’ attitude was that this might be a great song but I really didn’t need to inflict it on them. Cave’s stringent rock adds the perfect touch to cut against the way Wenders’ allows his film to drift towards sentimentalism. The subsequent sequence where Ganz and Solveig Dommartin meet is perhaps the weakest in the movie, and reflects the way that it might be said that Wings of Desire loses its way, as it tries to winkle out a feelgood finale, abandoning the more ambiguous tone of the first black-and-white two thirds of the film. 

3 Camera work

The opening twenty minutes or so of Wings of Desire are astonishing. The angels eavesdrop on the thoughts of man and woman, with only the children in on the game. The film seeks to capture the inner monologue of an entire city. Like something out of Kierkegaard or Strindberg All of which is made possible by the magical camera work of Henri Alekan. His camera soars through the skies, before dropping into a flat or a library or a car to steal thoughts. Reminiscent of Gasper Noe’s camera (Benoît Debie) or that of Soy Cuba (Serguey Urusevsky), the camera itself is transformed into a technological angel, one who takes the arm of the poor human and accompanies that lesser creature along the bumpy road of life. 

From Wiki:   “During filming, Alekan used a very old and fragile silk stocking that had belonged to his grandmother as a filter for the monochromatic sequences.”