Wings of Desire (DVD)

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I used to think that "Wings of Desire" (1987) took forever to get started. Now I realize that it ends just a little too soon.

After Rainer Werner Fassbinder´s death in 1982 unofficially officially brought an end to the New German Cinema, it was fair to ask what would happen to the remaining stars of the movement. The lukewarm reception of Herzog´s grand delusion "Fitzcarraldo" (1982) derailed his feature filmmaking career ("Where the Green Ants Dream" (1984) and "Cobra Verde" (1987) went largely unnoticed) for a few decades. He used the time well to bolster his status as a controversial documentary guru, but his status as a marketable international festival commodity was diminished. Volker Schlöndorff was unable to follow up on his Oscar-winning, grossly overrated "The Tin Drum" (1979) and Alexander Kluge had never made the move across the Atlantic in the first place.

That left Wim Wenders as the last autor standing, at least in America. After "Paris, Texas" (1984) dominated the Cannes awards, the director was confronted with the challenge of a worthy follow-up act. He took a few years (shooting the fine documentary "Tokyo-Ga" in between) before stumbling upon a seemingly simple yet audacious idea: a movie about angels. That´s the genesis of the film. Wenders just scribbled "Angels?" in his notebook at one point. A movie followed.

Wenders then called upon his long-time collaborator Peter Handke to write the film. Handke was too busy to write a full script but cobbled together a few scenes of dialogue that Wenders then had to "fill in" and by "fill in" I mean create most of the film to get to these little "islands" that Handke had written. With only the sketchiest of screenplays in hand, began shooting a free-wheeling, mutable story that became one of the most iconic art-house films of the 1980s.

And what a strange, hodge-podge story it is. Damiel (Bruno Ganz, before he became a YouTube star) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who patrol the city of Berlin. They are invisible to most mortals save for the very young and serve mostly as observers whose only apparent ability is literally to provide a reassuring hand.

For much of the film, Damiel and Cassiel wander around the city and eavesdrop on the whispered, rambling thoughts of everyone around them. Out of this jumbled soundscape two mortal characters finally emerge, the most improbable of which is Peter Falk who portrays himself. Falk is on a film shoot in Germany (where they really love Columbo) and exhibits some unusual abilities, ones that even exceed his inherent Peter Falk-ness. The other is trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin) whose circus company is performing its final show. Damiel is smitten and decides to become mortal so that he can be with her.

In a traditional narrative structure, Damiel´s transition to mortal life would take up most of the second act, but the Wenders/Handke story stuffs it all into the last half hour. After we´ve spent the first three-quarters of the movie watching and waiting, waiting with beings who live a timeless existence, it´s an abrupt change that, to my taste, is a bit of a disappointment. There is a marvelous scene between Damiel and Falk and some amusing moments as Damiel gets his mortal sea legs but the film sputters after he shucks his wings.

Of course, the images and the sounds linger more than the story or dialogue. All of the scenes filmed from the angels´ point of view are shot in black-and-white. Everything from the mortal perspective is seen in color. To make this seem like more than a gimmick would be a difficult task for any cinematographer, but fortunately veteran Henri Alekan was on hand to rise to the challenge. Alekan shot one of the most beautiful films ever made, Jean Cocteau´s "Beauty and the Beast" (1946) and with "Wings of Desire" he proved that he hadn´t lost his touch even forty years later. His black-and-white photography is some of the richest committed to film. Alekan extracts more subtle shades of grey than anyone had previously thought existed on film stock. Every frame of this film could hang in a museum.

Alekan´s photography is only half of the equation (OK, maybe sixty percent.) Jurgen Knieper´s score builds a wall of sound composed of harps, cellos and a chorus that sings mostly at the highest and lowest registers. It´s a fairly literal minded composition that screams "angelic choir" and borders on the bombastic, but completes the other-worldly feel fostered by Alekan´s virtuoso light sculptures. That´s why the final scenes are a let down. The story detracts from the audio-visual envelopment of the bulk of the movie.