wings_of_desire ovenbird I can’t stop thinking about this movie. The premise is simple: angels walk the earth undetected, listening in on the thoughts of humans, but never able to touch or interact with the physical world. Their job is, according to the angel Cassiel, to “assemble, testify, preserve.” They are eternal witnesses, but never participants. The angel Damiel laments his incorporeal existence and his yearning for the simplest joys of the earth is one of the poetic foundations of the film. At the beginning of the movie he says to Cassiel: No, I don't have to beget a child or plant a tree... but it would be rather nice... coming home after a long day... to feed the cat, like Philip Marlowe... to have a fever... and blackened fingers from the newspaper... to be excited not only by the mind... but, at last, by a meal... by the line of a neck... by an ear. To lie! Through one's teeth. As you're walking, to feel your bones moving along. At last to guess, instead of always knowing. The film unfolds in a deeply sensual way, setting our embodied capacity for pleasure against our capacity for suffering, and for inflicting suffering. How is the species responsible for the fluid beauty of a trapeze artist also responsible for the horrors of war? And would you choose to risk the world’s suffering for the chance to eat an apple? Damiel does take this risk, for the sake of the apple, but also for the sake of love. He sheds his immortality and chooses the inevitability of death for the chance to delve into the twin offerings of love and despair. It made me ask if I have risked enough in this life. If I could pretend, for a moment, that my soul chose an embodied life, have I offered it enough sensual experience? Have I taken my time? Have I touched my fingers to everything that offers itself to the boundary of my body? Have I paused to truly delight in what my hands can do? The film returns repeatedly to a motif about childhood–the rooted presence and freedom of children, the way they do not yet know to fear oblivion, the way they are naturally inclined to grasp new experiences. When Damiel becomes human, he is also like a child. He reflects: When the child was a child. it lived on apples and bread, that was enough. And it is still that way. When the child was a child... berries fell only like berries into its hand... and they still do now. Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw... and they still do now. Atop each mountain, it was longing... for a higher mountain. And in each city, it was longing... for a bigger city... and it still does. Reached in the treetop for the cherries... as elated... as it still is. Was shy... in front of strangers. And it still is. Waited for the first snow... and still waits that way. When the child was a child... it threw a stick, like a lance, into a tree. And it's still quivering there today. We carry this child-like possibility inside of us. Though we’ve often forgotten how to access it, giving in to our crueler whims, our warlike desires. I try to remember. I carefully crack an egg into a frying pan and taste the warmth of a golden yolk for the first time. 260215 ... raze everything about this film seems impossible. it was written by three different people. all of them had different ideas about what the end result was going to look like. the cinematographer used a disintegrating silk stocking that belonged to his grandmother as a filter to lend the black_and_white sequences a dream-like hue. solveig dommartin learned the acrobatic skills necessary for her scenes in two months and did all her own stunt work. the german police were called to search for peter falk when he disappeared from the set. he was found in a west berlin cafe, having wandered away to explore the enclave. much of the dialogue peter handke wrote was added after the fact as voiceover narration when he balked at the discovery that almost none of it had been filmed. it should have been a mess. instead, it must be one of the few perfect films i've seen, with every potential misstep a small miracle. "sometimes beauty is the only thing that matters. to look in the mirror is to watch yourself think. so what are you thinking? i think i still have the right to be afraid, but not to talk about it. you haven't gone blind yet. your heart is still beating." 260217 what's it to you? who go blather from