The Classics Corner: Wings of Desire (1987)

Below is a transcript of my thoughts when I finished watching Der Himmel Uber Berlin. Thanks to Wim Wenders, Bob Dylan, Tom Stoppard and James Joyce. Apologies to no one.

oh my

easy now

get back to your Body

alright move your hands through Space hold them in front of the Screen

my God what i can do with these things i can create and break things and only their shapes

why am i crying

you are still sitting on the couch you moron clean your coffee cup or you wont be able to get the stain out

cold water on my hands

wow i actually have hands my God it feels good better then anything i ever felt i am a Soul in a Body. why am i feeling like this this is not how i’m supposed to Feel

why am i laughing

“I think it’s meaninglessness is holy”. that’s what i thought about Andrey Ryublev as well – but i only thought it then, now i feel it – what is this feeling? is this religion? is the movie religion? is religion art, or the other way around?

What was that quote from Visions of Johanna? “voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while”… is that what those angels were going through? Those two reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: always invisible, never making an impact, only their deaths being truly important… But here their embrace of mortality is shown to be the true goodness, the coming alive, the living instead of floating… this rubber band in my hand feels like a rosary. what a clever idea to use those, otherwise all the monks would fly away

I wonder what Roger Ebert has to say about such a movie that gets so much under your skin but is so careful not to tear it

Henri Alekan shot this movie when he was 77… fitting for an old man to look down with the angels as his life is almost over. Maybe life is all about climbing up, and mercy just looking down… I feel like I have climbed up to a whole new ladder just now… What inspires a man like Wim Wenders? What an extraordinary person he must be. It’s great to belong to the same species as him.

Get your head straight a little. Open a window. Put on a song. Yes, The Album Leaf will do. Holy shit, I never understood this music until now. Those drum clicks on Twenty two fourteen don’t interrupt the flow of the piano, they perfect it. Tempus fugit, and the drum just clicks through it in time…

This would be perfect for that idea from a while back about the end of the world, remember, what would people do with 24 hours? I think I know. Not just what I would do, but what other people would do. Other human beings, who had a last chance to be human beings.

itunes -> repeat song

word -> open new file

2 hours later, at 4 am, I finished my screenplay, knowing two things: that I had never felt such strong love for all of mankind, and that Wings of Desire was one of the most perfect works of art I had ever seen. I did not sleep that night.

Max