There are so many moments of stunning beauty in this film that it's impossible to resist. The plot is ultra-simple: an angel falls in love and wants to be human. So simple that Hollywood turned it into a vapid, swooning weepie. But Wenders had something else in mind here, and so his camera follows a wealth of characters, from Peter Falk (playing himself) to an elderly historian, to a French trapeze artist across a desolate looking Berlin, reading their thoughts as they speak to themselves, clumsy and eloquent, about the small details of being alive.
Of course it doesn't really jell into a narrative, but that's far beside Wenders' point here. Certainly a caveat emptor for anyone who doesn't care for slow moving art films, but rich trove of beauty awaits those who are willing to conquer this film. It has all of the usual Wenders problems, of course. For all of the thinking that these people do, our insights into their emotions is quite murky. Perhaps that is what Wenders is trying to say, but in building to a denoument that seems intended to release a highly charged emotional catharsis, this lack of clarity seems restraining. For that reason, the finale is strangely muted and a bit contrived.
Wenders directs like an impressionist composer, focusing on feeling rather than development. It's both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. It keeps this film from being the classic that it occasionally seems like, but it's worth watching more than once.
7/10
Of course it doesn't really jell into a narrative, but that's far beside Wenders' point here. Certainly a caveat emptor for anyone who doesn't care for slow moving art films, but rich trove of beauty awaits those who are willing to conquer this film. It has all of the usual Wenders problems, of course. For all of the thinking that these people do, our insights into their emotions is quite murky. Perhaps that is what Wenders is trying to say, but in building to a denoument that seems intended to release a highly charged emotional catharsis, this lack of clarity seems restraining. For that reason, the finale is strangely muted and a bit contrived.
Wenders directs like an impressionist composer, focusing on feeling rather than development. It's both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. It keeps this film from being the classic that it occasionally seems like, but it's worth watching more than once.
7/10