pietro_parodi

The movie playbill for the American version of the movie (the one you see on the site) is quite misleading: a naked woman in the background with the title "Wings of desire" -- it almost looks as the movie should have some erotic content. But there's nothing here which will try to appeal to your immediate senses. This is a poignantly beautiful metaphysical excursion on what it means to be human. Wim Wenders has recognized the metaphysical nature of the movie by dedicating it to Truffaut, Ozu and especially Tarkovskij. And everything -- the bleakness of the landscape, the ubiquity of the Berlin wall, the anguish in which the characters are immersed -- acquires a deeper meaning when we see it through the eyes of two angels. And the sky over Berlin, with its angels, is the only thing that keeps together two painfully divided sides of the city, and the only perspective from which to see it as one.

But handle with care: if you're looking for a movie with an enthralling plot, a clear language and a reasonable pace, you'll be disappointed. The first time I saw this movie with a friend we laughed all the way. I've seen it more 5-6 times now and I've stopped laughing. I sit there and I'm mesmerized.

The movie was born without a script and it is a melting pot with dialogues by Peter Handke, improvised monologues by the actors, connecting material written by Wim Wenders. In one example, Wenders indulges too long in a scene just because he regrets removing it due to all the work the actress has made for preparing to be a trapezist. This is clearly against all rules and all common sense.

Despite all this the movie works and the reason is, the movie somehow manages to touch deep strings all the way through, because of its beautiful imagery (thanks to director of photography Henri Alekan), its eerie soundtrack, the disorderly collection of truly poetic dialogues/monologues, very inspired acting, and the impredictable combined effect of all this -- surely beyond what was planned by Wim Wenders himself. Should I add that the movie has created its own language for making its point?

The film has also become an incredible documentary on Berlin just before the fall of the wall.

This is the movie adaptation of Andrea De Carlo's novel "Treno di panna" (Cream train) which took a disenchanted yet charming look at West Coast America. Much of the charm of that plotless novel lied, I suppose, in the peculiar anti-hero attitude of the main character, who constantly lies, is cynical, apathetic, sometimes spiteful and simply flees aways situations that he can't handle anymore -- all this with that non-judgmental lightness which is one of the most agreeable identification marks of Italian culture in novel- and movie-making. Unfortunately, most of the charm is gone in this movie reduction where the main character is honest, frank (and he's all but thrown out of his first accommodation for this) and righteous -- as if movie adaptation required a puritanisation process. As a whole, a far flatter and faker character (not because of the acting, which is quite good). The other changes made to the plot (e.g., would-be writers replaced by would-be musicians, and the filming location chosen to be New York City and not California) are only to be expected, although the bleak-side California of the novel was memorable and I missed it.