Damiel visits the Circus Alekan three times -- and once visits its site after its departure. Beyond being a sort of tribute to Henri Alekan, naming the circus after the film's director of photography, it is another instance in which Wenders breaks down the barriers between the film's world and the viewer's realm. The attentive viewer is reminded, upon seeing the sign "Circus Alekan" that she is watching a film shot by Henri Alekan (photographer of Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête). For those viewers familiar with this area of Berlin (the Friedrichstadt) there is the additional resonance with the fact that this was Weimar Berlin's thriving theater and cabaret district. The desire to rebuild the Weimar Potsdamer Platz after the wall fell in 1989 was transformed into an entirely different kind of urban development from what had been at that site. Conversely, the principles guiding the reconstruction of the Friedrichstadt mirrored the urban planning dictates of an earlier era and one finds "a Berlin identity in the decades before 1914." The rekindling of a theater district has not occurred, per se -- though the circus’ fleeting presence is an echo of the district’s past -- but the district’s architectural character has been restored more closely here than in the Potsdamer Platz.

Damiel's first visit to the circus, alone, occurs during the final rehearsal on the day of the circus' final shows. This scene coincides with the first appearance of color in the film. His statements from the first time we hear him speak indicate his desire to become human. Falk's dialog at the coffee stand serves as a literal invitation to take the plunge and become human. The use of color underscores that a shift is underway before the fall occurs. The mortals in the scene play out a shift or transition, as well. They are informed, in the midst of their work, that the circus is closing for the season. Funds are unavailable to continue. This casts the characters into a state similar to that of Damiel, about to embark on a new phase of their existence. This situation also rhymes with the state of consciousness being created in the viewer, in the sense that the experience of viewing the film is going to shift or transform into a different structure and style. The viewer is going to embark, as well.

Damiel's second visit to the circus occurs later that day, during the afternoon matinee performance. This time, Damiel has brought Cassiel along with him. Directly preceding this visit, in one of the few scenes where we see one angel suggesting a course of action to another angel, we glimpse Damiel motioning to Cassiel, while on the air-raid shelter film set, to "come with me." (Interestingly, this is the closest Wenders gets to shooting the angels in the traditional shot-reverse-shot construction. Everything in that Hollywood convention is present except the "over the shoulder" nature of the archetypal shot-reverse-shot.)

During the matinee, Wenders begins to shoot Cassiel and Damiel as if the latter were already a mortal. Cassiel watches Damiel from a typically (in the context of the film) angelic perspective -- standing whereas the human audience and Damiel are sitting. The girl sitting next to Damiel turns to him several times, as if he were just another member of the audience (and perhaps a family friend). The scene is presentimental.

Directly following the matinee, Damiel and Cassiel re-affirm their long history together -- almost as if their impending separation has drawn them into the need to take stock of their past. However, after recounting their experiences with a kind of awe or reverence -- the story of the Earth and humans and the angelic space -- Damiel reconfirms his desire to become human. Damiel's statements truly are in the realm of a "confirmation," prompted by Cassiel querying him on the subject. Apparently, sometime between the discussion in the BMW and now, Damiel's yearnings have driven him to tell Cassiel he has decided to become mortal. Damiel says he wants to "conquer a history" for himself -- to write his own story. He speaks of having been "outside long enough... absent long enough... long enough out of the world."

Damiel's third visit to the circus occurs that evening. In contrast with the matinee performance, during the closing night performance we are privy to very few shots of the crowd. That is, when the audience is composed of children -- the matinee -- Wenders emphasizes them as participatory viewers, but when the audience is composed largely of adults -- the evening performance -- the audience members are marginalized. Here again, the nature and presence of children is foregrounded. In the film's equation of "childlike" = "angelic," this omission of the adult audience suggests a continuing privileging of the angelic mode of being. But the angelic mode is increasingly tempered. The mix of point of view shots, some from Damiel's perspective on the ground, others from Marion's perspective on the trapeze, contrasts with the treatment the same location has received on the previous visits. To the extent that these alternating shots mimic a shot-reverse-shot construction, even though Damiel is still invisible, he is almost "there."

Damiel's final visit to the circus' site the morning after the final performance, when the carny's have packed and gone, is particularly poignant. His notion of the easy transition, from angelic realm to his idealized notion of what he wants in the human realm, has been subverted: she's gone. He doesn't have particularly long to wait until he finds Marion, and the task does not prove particularly difficult. Damiel's words to Cassiel (whom he correctly suspects is close by) indicate his faith in the momentary and readily surmountable nature of the challenge.

More importantly, Damiel in the deserted lot is now cast into a rhyming space with Homer, wandering around the ruins of the Potsdamer Platz, seeking something meaningful that he used to find there. The Potsdamer Platz was once the thriving center of Berlin -- arguably the most modern city center in the most modern city. Mark Twain commented on the manner in which Chicago appeared backward compared to the Berlin surrounding the platz -- ironic in that Berliners sometimes referred to their city as the "German Chicago." The first electric streetlights in Europe appeared here. The world's first traffic light was constructed here. Certainly by the 1930s, if not earlier (the traffic light was first installed in 1920 or 1925 -- accounts vary), the consensus among Berliners was that the Potsdamer Platz was the busiest intersection in the world. The platz was the site of huge anti-war rallies during the First World War -- and was essentially destroyed during the Second World War. Rebuilding the platz became increasingly unlikely in August of 1961, when the Berlin wall was erected -- directly through the desolate stretch of land. Remaining structures on the eastern side of the wall were removed to make space for the "death strip" (sometimes called the "no man's land") and in the West, some replacement of street layouts and structures occurred -- including the Staatsbibliothek (State Library). By the time the wall fell, one of the few surviving historical structures there was the Hotel Esplanade -- an echo of the time when the platz was the city's social center, an echo of the Nazi era, and a locus of interaction in Wings of Desire.

The Potsdamer Platz is "one of those Berlin places notable for what is not there. Like Hitler's bunker, the royal palace, and now the Wall, Potsdamer Platz is a significant void. And like them, its significance can only be recovered through memory and history." The memory of the Potsdamer Platz has been, for many, a memory of the high-modernism of Weimar Berlin. Homer's search for that place was echoed in the years following the film, when re-building the platz to it's former glory was a desire in many Berliners' minds. But that desire is problematic. Homer will not find the platz, and deliberately re-building the platz (Homer rebuilding the grand epic) is a difficult notion: the original (in both instances) was built up over generations. As the fate of the Platz since the wall fell has indicated, it is possible to build significant structures in the space of the old platz but it is not possible to re-build the classic platz. Where once a vibrant, organically evolving mayhem marked not only a city but a cultural center, now three monolithic corporations (Daimler-Benz, Sony, and ABB) are building a well regulated, planned urban space of nineteen buildings laid out along 50m by 50m city blocks.

The desire for the old Potsdamer Platz is significant in another sense. To the extent that the seeker of the platz seeks the culture and milieu of the Weimar era as epitomized by the Platz, the seeker seeks a version of Berlin -- and German -- culture wholly condemned by Hitler and the Nazi era. Curt Bois (the actor portraying Homer) died in 1991. His career as an actor (stage and screen) spanned the twentieth century and embodied much of what his character embodied. Bois was a German Jew who thrived in Weimar Berlin, but fled in 1933. Both Bois' and Homer's Potsdamer Platz is gone.

The rhyme here -- Damiel "seeking" in the deserted lot, mimics Homer's search in the Potsdamer Platz -- includes having Cassiel as his guardian angel. Homer will not be particularly successful in his diagetic journey. He cannot return to the platz he recalls, and he never does create the grand epic he desires, even if he may inspire the viewer to engage in creating her own personal epic. Damiel, however, will be more successful in his search. Damiel will find Marion. But, more than that, Damiel will be successful in creating the kind of personal narrative that Homer suggests all humans can benefit from -- or, even, require.

These essays are copyrighted © 1999 - 2001 by Nathan Wolfson (nathan underscore wolfson at yahoo dot com). Quotations from other sources are copyrighted by those sources, as indicated in the Notes and Bibliography. All rights are reserved.