WINGS OF DESIRE directed by Wim Wenders

A harmless prion - is there such a thing? A molecule twisting another to fit itself - or a memory shaping another? Sometimes a film enters my head and like a prion changes my ideas and thoughts. The images haunt me as if they are people I used to know and have now gone away - abruptly and forever. A part of me wants to see the sequel but my more sensible part warns me to stay away. So it was with this film WINGS OF DESIRE which we saw last night.

It is Berlin 1987 and there are angels everywhere. Only children can see them. They haunt the sad, the lonely and the suicidal. They peer over the shoulders of scholars and listen to their thoughts. Libraries are their favoured habitat.

I found this comforting - like that promise from childhood: 'Jesus loves you'. It was personal - repeated to me again and again by my grandparents, parents and people that taught me in Sunday School. The bearded man smiling faintly from faded pictures would be there for me whenever I needed him. Just like an angel. Just like these angels in Berlin. As a child I believed this absolutely. When this child was a child...

Which was exactly how the film started - with this poem by Peter Handke:

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging...

The film is shot in black and white because the angels do not see in colour. The first part was a pastiche of life in Berlin before the wall came down. I recognised some of it: the concrete and the odd patches of overgrown derelict land - it was still there when I went in 2001; but maybe it is gone now.

The job of angels, it turns out, is primarily to observe and their reports reminded me sometimes of Virginia Wolfe's KEW GARDEN and REM's video of EVERYBODY HURTS.

But, like humans, angels can become distracted. One tried to persuade a suicidal man not to jump - and was devastated when he failed; while another reminded the victim of a car crash of reasons to live - things like the smell of fresh bread, the sound of rain on leaves.. until once again the film blended with the poem:

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, ...bread
And so it is even now.
When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now...

This latter angel also fell in love with a lonely trapeze artist and wanted to become mortal in order to be with her, and so like THE LITTLE MERMAID, had to endure both the wonder (the redness of blood, the touch of the ground beneath his feet) and the pain of being human.

I found it an inspiring film and very European in character - mainly because the actors were allowed long beautiful speeches. I also thought it a great and adventurous piece of art.

Here is another angel. One that I bought this Saturday when I went to Birmingham...


It is not robust or as strong as the angels in the film but I think it will do very well as observer from the top of the Christmas tree.