WINGS OF DESIRE
(Der Himmel über Berlin)

PARTS: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN
NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wings of Desire constructs a kaleidoscope of desires for narrative. Homer, Cassiel, Damiel, Marion, Falk, the filmmaker, and the viewer all vie for narrative -- each in a different manner. Homer seeks a grand narrative that he can tell, largely from outside that narrative, which offers to listeners a redemptive power. Cassiel desires a substantive interaction with the human world, but not at the price of becoming human. Damiel has no story, but wants to create one for himself through interaction with the world. Marion variously expresses a desire for a life story, the possession of such a story, and the power to create of her life anything that she chooses. Falk is not only the former angel who has chosen to be human and write a story for himself, but his business is in the depiction of narratives. Wenders offers the viewer all these takes on narrative -- and deliberately sets the viewer up to desire narrative, accept its absence, and then doubly accept its (sub-textually loaded) appearance.

Traditionally, in film criticism, "diegetic" (or "intra-diegetic") refers to that which is within, or a part of, the film's world or story space, while "nondiegetic" refers to things that are outside of the story space but that construct the film (such as camerawork/mis-en-scene, editing/montage, music). The labels are most often used in relation to soundtrack events -- usually music, though sometimes narration. For example, music coming from a radio in a scene is diegetic. If the viewer cannot see the radio, but knows that it is the source of the music, then that music is diegetic but off-screen. If the music is part of the soundtrack score, but does not emanate from within the story space, it is nondiegetic. Sometimes, the boundaries are deliberately blurred, as in the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The music the viewer hears as the Harfords prepare to go to Ziegler's party appears to be a non-diagetic score until William turns off the radio and we learn that the music was diagetic. Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles offers another example. The music that at first seems to be a clichéd score actually emanates from a band within the story space. Brooks' camera discloses the band as his camera follows the characters riding past the band on horseback.

David Bordwell describes a "core-periphery schema" for a film's "textual structure" in his Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. In this useful bull's-eye schema, he presents a series of circles that enclose one another. The very center contains the film's characters (their traits, actions, etc.) set off from the second circle, which encompasses the characters: the diagetic world, which he calls the characters' surroundings. A third circle encompasses the film's diagetic world (which encompasses the film's characters): the nondiegetic world. Several more circles can be added to such a diagram. There could be another band for the social, cultural, economic and political circumstances of the film's production. And there could be a "meta-diagetic" band, for the context and content of viewers' reactions to (or interactions with) the film. Wings of Desire continually blurs the distinction between the characters' realm, the diagetic and nondiegetic realms, and what I call the meta-diagetic realm (the viewer's place in relation to the film). Some such instances of blurring -- the intermixing of narrative and non-narrative film styles, color and black-and-white film stock, Marion in the Esplanade speaking to the camera/viewer while also speaking to Damiel -- are at the heart of Wings of Desire's explorations of narrative, agency, participation, interaction and consequence.

It is interesting to note that for all their complaints to the contrary, Damiel and Cassiel have some influence on (even "in") the mortal world, from the start. Beyond influencing Marion's dream to the point of appearing in one, Damiel is able to lead a dying motorcycle accident victim on a guided meditation of familiar archetypes as the man's life force exits his body. While sitting in the BMW, Damiel notes that a blind woman reached for her watch when she felt his presence. Damiel's comforting presence helps a despondent man on the subway regain his perseverance. And perhaps most tellingly, Cassiel's despair at his inability to prevent the suicide from leaping to his death from atop the Europa-Center implies a reasonable expectation on Cassiel's part that he could have helped that desperate mortal. (Although it is unclear whether the visibility of the angels effects the children in any manner, that part of the film's cosmology again suggests some substance to the angels' travails.)

We are first introduced to Homer by way of Cassiel describing the effect on a child of hearing Homer recite the Odyssey. The child is captivated. Here again, the motif of the transformative effect of witnessing narrative -- for a being with an open mind, like the mind that Wenders has attempted to create in the viewer -- is underscored. When we first meet Homer in person, he asks the Muse to tell him of a storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, who is both an infant and an ancient, and through whom the common person will be revealed. In addition to reading Homer's words as a poet's plea to his muse, I read Homer's first words in the film as a plea on the part of the filmmaker as storyteller. I also read Homer's words as a plea on the part of the viewer, who will be moved to want to construct her own narrative out of the non-narrative first portion of the film. The viewer is already in the grip of the open or childlike mind that the "angelic" portion of the film manifests. This act on the viewer's part rhymes with Damiel being moved to create a narrative outside the angelic (or, in the human) realm.

The path the film lays out draws on an ancient -- or archaic -- impulse, most prevalent in children or the childlike, present in everyone. The work of crafting a story is not only open to all, but is a basic human need or desire. Homer underlines this sentiment when he speaks of the world getting darker, and notes that "the tale" saves him in the present and protects him in the future. He then brings the human need for childlike engagement with the world back to the fore. Humans need this in order to look upon the world with eyes that see possibilities, and in order to make something good of existence. Or, as Homer says, if he gives up his search for the tale, humanity will have lost their storyteller -- and thus its childhood. These notions harmonize with the film's suggestions that to be most successfully human is to be as open minded as a child when considering the manner or direction in which to write one's own story (or to live one's own life).

Damiel first expresses his desire to experience being a human very early in the film, while sitting in the BMW with Cassiel. Their conversation foreshadows that an element of that desire is an interest in romantic love. Damiel not only speaks tenderly of being moved by the nape of a woman's neck -- something that will happen later, shortly after he first encounters Marion, but before Damiel's fall -- but he interrupts Cassiel during the conversation in the BMW to point out a couple kissing on the sidewalk. Marion becomes Damiel's desire as action. The film underscores this fact with the first of an increasingly large number of scenes shot in color. The experience of seeing Marion for the first time, and (moments later) seeing her as the subject of the film's first scene in color, does not immediately move the viewer out of the mode of perceiving the film's events as if one were an angel. Color stock will increasingly play the role of denoting that "this scene is being seen as if by a human" or, at least, of being portrayed through more traditional cinematic means and of portraying a world in which angels can't be seen. But the first shots in color serve to keep the viewer in the angel's point of view to the extent that the audience's shock or surprise or joy at seeing (Marion) in color mimics the shock or surprise or joy Damiel feels in stumbling upon Marion for the first time.

The hint that this first splash of color on the screen might lead to a largely color film -- and the attendant implication that the film will no longer be about an angel in the angelic (b/w) realm but, rather, in the corporeal (color) world, is not plain. Rather, the viewer's expectation is likely to be that Marion is but another of the many humans the angels come across in their journey. As the story progresses, Wenders' comments that Marion is really the central character in the film, while arguably a stretch, still become understandable.

While Marion may be the main character in the film for the narrative side of the film, Homer's role speaks more broadly. Like Damiel, Homer chases the unattainable -- and in the chase fulfills his dharma or role, not as he might intend (in composing a narrative) but as the viewer perceives him: Homer's statements point to notions regarding narrative that the film expresses. Damiel speaks of wanting to be human and, before taking the final leap, speaks of the magical role he will play in the world upon his arrival. Cassiel reminds him that none of it will be true. So Damiel's dream of living a distinct life will only be half realized -- that is, his goal will be unattainable, but the effort could be (and arguably, in the cosmology of the film, is) the reward in itself. Homer's search for the unattainable is divided between a search for something "abstract" (a narrative) and something "concrete" -- the Potsdamer Platz. Ironically, the area around the Potsdamer Platz has been reconstituted and is now home to the Berlin Film Festival (in the Berlin Mitte) as well as the Potsdamer Platz IMAX movie theater. The center of narrative that Homer sought in a ruined urban space in Wenders' film has become a major exhibition space in little more than a decade. (In a more general sense, as witnessed in Far Away, So Close!, a huge amount of construction has taken place -- and continues to take place -- in this area.)

The abstract materializes diegetically, though not for Homer. The love story narrative unfolds after the comparatively non-narrative experience of the first portion of the film. The abstract might materialize meta-textually, in the sense of inspiring viewers to incorporate the film's values into their own life stories. While Homer finds the location of the Potsdamer Platz, the platz is gone. Once the center of Berlin -- and it's narrative -- it is now conspicuous in its absence. Seeking a center for a narrative -- a subject -- manifests itself in Homer's journey as it does in Damiel's descent, and in the viewer's experience of the film.

Marion makes the search for narrative a more personal affair than Homer, or, even, Damiel. Marion searches for a story for herself and looks beyond herself less than Homer or Damiel (except when speaking metaphorically in the final barroom dialogue). She first speaks of this situation as ripe with possibility (in the afternoon when Damiel first encounters her). "I'm someone with no roots, no story, no country and I like it that way. I'm here, I'm free, I can imagine anything. It's all possible. I only have to raise my eyes and once again I become the world." Later, she speaks of having acquired a story (at night, after her final performance). "I'm happy. I have a story and I'll go on having one." This also forms a microcosm of the film as a whole -- from a place of random events offering infinite possibilities into a world with a definite story.

Homer's relation to stories (narrative) is larger than Marion's, but is the complement to her search. Marion searches for a story for herself. Homer speaks of hidden (mountain) passes, that plains and (even) Berlin posses. He wonders why people don't see them, for these passes are the heart of the tale he is trying to tell (they are the country of his tale). He suggests that if people could see these passes, there would be history without war and murder. For Homer, these passes -- the means to a harmonious existence -- are built through narrative, the kind of narrative that Marion expresses a deep desire for, and the kind of narrative that Damiel chooses to participate in by becoming human.

Almost without exception, Cassiel is the angel associated with Homer. Cassiel first introduces Homer while he speaks with Damiel in the BMW. There is one brief encounter between Homer and Damiel in the library. But then the film reverts to portraying Homer in Cassiel's presence. Cassiel expresses some interest in being human in the BMW. Perhaps he experiences some pain from that unrealized desire when shown alone in the library, or when taking the even more lonely bus ride in the dawn, or when figuratively alone when failing to prevent the suicide or when on stage with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. But Cassiel has the least realized expression of the desire to be human, and to craft his own history. The juxtaposition of Homer and Cassiel, is both a suggestion of two complimentary halves sharing the same spiritual space and a suggestion that perhaps if the viewer knew more about Cassiel, she might find that his desires are strong but simply do not surface in particularly salient manners.

The tension between the angelic point of view and the human perspective never fully recedes. The last scene still contains a hint of the angelic role in the world, with Cassiel sequestered into a corner of an otherwise color frame, in a black-and-white patch of the screen. The marginalization of the angelic perspective, however, is emphasized in increasing degrees. The amount of screen time devoted to color stock, to more traditional, classical (Hollywood) narrative exposition in terms of mis-en-scene and, especially, montage (such as shot-reverse-shot constructions) all lead to the viewer into a more familiar world of color cinematography and nearly conventional story-telling. By the end of the film, Wings has become a rather conventional love story in many respects --- aside from the final, unconventional dialog in the bar. When considered in the context of what has transpired during the "angelic" portion of the film, however, in concert with the dialog in the bar, Wings continues to subvert the conventional.

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.