Sunday, November 20, 2005

Wings of Desire

Beautiful and poetic. Amazing cinematography- some of the images look like they were ripped from a lost Murnau film. Some of the voiceovers are obtuse to a degree that makes Terrence Malick and David Gordon Green sound like Raymond Chandler, but they're always thought-provoking and grounded in human concerns.
Bruno Ganz- what can you say? The perfect actor to play a lovestruck angel. His love for humanity and the little details of earthly life becomes love for a profoundly lonely woman, which gives him the chance to experience the fullness of life as a child of God. There's more than meets the eye; I'm sure Wenders is also making a statement about the state of Berlin in the late '80s, but what stands out to me is the sophisticated richness of the human relationships in the film.
Along with Paris, Texas, this proves that Wenders was once capable of a degree of sensitive humanist characterization reserved for Jean Renoir, John Cassavetes, and Kenji Mizoguchi. And who knows, maybe he still has a few gems in him. I'm looking forward to Don't Come Knocking.

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