Der Himmel über Berlin

In West Berlin, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who wonder the world observing and providing comfort. Damiel wants to be more human. He starts to fall for trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin) at a rundown circus. There is also the elderly Homer who recalls the Berlin of old. Another is Peter Falk who is shooting a film taking place in the Nazi past but he's also hiding a secret from his own past. The best way to describe this is a German meditation. It's digging into the Nazi past in an artistic way. I personally don't see anything compelling about that. It is so slow and Damiel is so passive. It infuriated me more than appealed to me. Of course, everybody in the world loves it but all the inner monologues and the unemotional acting bored me.

I can never be a film-maker because of Wings of Desire. It is such a stunning work, I know I could never match it, much less exceed it. I have never seen a film that spans such great heights (pardon the pun) of the spiritual, the social, emotional, political and existential. It's the most gorgeous love story I have ever encountered and its anguish and exilaration is unparallel. But enough of the Critic-Speak. This movie shows the loneliness and wonder of being alive and if you remain unmoved by it, you must have no soul.

I just saw this film for the first time. This film is simply amazing. So subtley powerful. The climaxing scene at the bar, is like seeing the world in a grain of sand. There, just now. Did you see it? There it is again. And again, over there. You didn't see it? Watch and you'll see. This film has just made #1 on my favorite films of all time. The way they use Peter Faulk to trancend the boundry between art and life, or perhaps erase the line all together, wonderfully creative. We are guided gently in to a world full of fallen angels, and then brought full circle back home again. This is simply a must see movie. I find it hard to imagine anyone not getting something out of this movie.