Wings of Desire

From a longer post:

Wings of Desire

I saw other winged creatures tonight on cable – they were showing Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” one of my all-time favorite movies. I saw it when it came out, in the theater, and it’s one of those movies where you walk outside afterwards and all the world has changed. Set in Berlin (1987 movie), it’s about an angel who falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist and decides to become mortal. He wants to experience the transient things of a mortal life – the actual taste of an apple or a cup of coffee, to know what color is, to feel the cold on his hands, and of course the experience of love. All the beautiful things that we take for granted, things that we fear losing and yet fail to fully appreciate when we have them.

I missed a lot of the movie this time, because I was home and therefore distracted with some of those very mortal things – making the spaghetti sauce, a little later than I planned; explaining to my housemate what she missed because she came in late; and talking with her about things of more immediate import than some of the endless ramblings in German (the angels listen in on the thoughts of mortals, but these being German mortals there is some heavy shit going on in there!). Peter Falk is wonderful playing himself. And Bruno Ganz, the angel who falls in love, may have the most beatific smile I’ve seen on screen.

By the way, there was a Hollywood remake you may have seen, “City of Angels” with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. I was prepared to hate it, but I think they did a pretty good job of transporting the basic story line to a completely different time and place and sensibility.

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