‘Wings of Desire’: the Wim Wenders film inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke
The mesmerising cinema of Wim Wenders is truly a gift for film fans all over the world. Through incredibly beautiful dramatic features as well as pioneering documentaries, Wenders has influenced multiple generations of filmmakers and cinephiles. While Paris, Texas has probably emerged as the most popular Wenders film over the years, the German auteur’s entire filmography is studded with one cinematic masterpiece after the other.
One of Wenders’ greatest achievements is the strangely beautiful 1987 fantasy film Wings of Desire. Starring the legendary Bruno Ganz, it paints a haunting portrait of the alienation that has been imposed on us by the relentless progress of modernity. Ganz delivers a powerful performance as an invisible angel who listens to the concerns of Berlin’s residents whose innermost thoughts often fall on deaf ears, having been imprisoned inside their own heads.
Oscillating between colour photography and black and white, Henri Alekan’s stunning cinematography effortlessly transports the viewer to a realm that simultaneously exists in our world and outside of it. While working on the initial ideas for the film, Wenders borrowed from a lot of sources – such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujirō Ozu and François Truffaut. However, perhaps the origin of the project came from a literary inspiration – the renowned Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
In an essay penned for Criterion, Wenders explained his thought process: “I really don’t know what gave me the idea of angels. One day I wrote ‘angels’ in my notebook, and the next day ‘the unemployed’. Maybe it was because I was reading Rilke at the time—nothing to do with films—and realising as I read how much of his writing is inhabited by angels. Reading Rilke every night, perhaps I got used to the idea of angels being around.”
While writing about the challenges presented, the director added: “After a while, I began to doubt whether it would amount to a film. I tried to push the idea away, but it was never quite extinguished. I filled a whole notebook, but it still didn’t add up to a film. Usually, a line soon emerges that enables you to fix on the characters and their relationships. But with angels, you could do anything; there were connections all over the place; you could go anywhere.”
It’s safe to say that Wenders transcended all the obstacles in his way, just like his angels transcend the limitations of time and space in his film. Wings of Desire is one of those rare works that critics love to call a “life-changing film”, and for once, there couldn’t be a more appropriate label. Ranging from Nick Cave to Peter Falk, it’s a masterpiece about the human condition that truly has it all.
