A Tale of Two Angels: Painful Past and Precious Present by Haley Ecker

Sun or moon. Black or white. Rain or shine. Day or night. These are all opposites, describing two polar ends of specific spectrums involving color, nature, space, and time. These are all broad gestalts, but it is because of their major differences that we often are forced to choose between the two poles. We recognize that there are mediums between these poles, being noon, the color grey, a clear night sky, and an overcast day. It is the choice between the two poles; however, that choice encourages us to look at the middle.

Wim Wenders introduces two figures in The Wings of Desire that represent two other poles: present and past. Damiel and Cassiel are two angels that overlook the residents of a Berlin Wall-divided Germany. After watching and listening to the hopes and dreams of a melancholic trapeze artist, Damiel begins to consider trading his immortality for a regular life amongst the rest of the humans that he and Cassiel watch over. Cassiel does not share this same desire to trade in his immortality and debates Damiel about the worth of becoming human in the context of all the tragedies they have had to witness. Wenders uses the angels to represent two sides of humanity, with Damiel being the incarnation for hope and love for the present and Cassiel being the depiction of humanity’s disdain and constant looking-over-the-shoulder-motion toward the past. With these two contrasts, Wenders is able to demonstrate how living in the moment, rather than staying in the past, is what helps to bring about a full, meaningful life.

           

The core difference in the fundamentals of the two angels can be seen in the people they choose to interact with. Damiel, our angel of the precious present, is often seen watching over smiling young children such as a young girl coloring on an airplane (Wenders, 00:04:12) and another girl sitting next to him at the circus (Wenders, 00:56:58). Both children appear to acknowledge his presence and smile at him as if they can actually see him, despite the fact that the angels are not typically seen with the naked eye. Cassiel, on the other hand, is viewed less often with smiling children and more so with somber adults reminiscing about the misery of the past, such as Homer, an old man who recollects about how Berlin used to look prior to World War II and the rise of the Berlin Wall (Wenders, 00:42:11).

While the elderly people Cassiel follows focus more on the past perils of Berlin, the children Damiel watches tend to focus more on playing games and being entertained. These kids are too preoccupied living in the moment to worry about the past. There is some purity in that only the children notice the angels’ presence – they lack a closed off imagination and desire to dwell on the past. This is analogous to those who can appreciate life’s beauty and those who cannot. The children do not know as much pain as the elderly since they have yet to experience any real tragedies. Ariana Farajollah best describes this idea in her blog post on Taking Giants Steps Press, stating that “the children, not yet corrupted by the limits of the rational mind, easily sense the comfort emitted by Damiel” (Farajollah, par. 7). Although naive, there is something simply beautiful about this; the children still have hopes and dreams to fill and are able to be in the present. 

           

Damiel is more interested in objects in the moment and entranced by the normalcy of human life. This is why he chooses to surround himself with happy, young children rather than the same depressed folks that Cassiel watches. In fact, when Damiel invites Cassiel to watch the circus discussed earlier, he is seen moving further away from Damiel and the kids as opposed to getting closer to the lively show (Wenders, 0:56:58). He appears significantly less excited to watch the performance and be around the youthful children than Damiel does. Instead of following and watching Homer with Cassiel, Damiel imagines twirling around a pen with his fingers in Homer’s library (Wenders, 0:19:44). He studies the pen as Cassiel listens to Homer think about how much Berlin has changed. As observed in how he watches Homer from the upper level of the library, Cassiel constantly distances himself from humans. Damiel, on the other hand, is willing to walk alongside the humans and get close to them. This distancing from the present is representative of how we humans tend to distance ourselves from the moment. Wenders uses a constantly “drifting camera” to further establish Cassiel’s distance from the present (Singer, par. 7). Once Damiel becomes human, the audience gets less of a bird’s eye view and more of a “dynamic, street-level” look at the present alongside Damiel (Singer, par. 7).

          

The difference between Damiel and Cassiel is ever more apparent through Wenders’s use of color. For the majority of the film, the viewers see through the monochromatic lens of the angels. Henri Alekan, the cinematographer of Wings of Desire, is responsible for this artistic decision, as the “sepia-tinged black-and-white imagery [depicts] the angels’ muted vision of the world. Ironically, [Alekan’s] rich, creamy monochrome might appear too gorgeously tactile for the angels’ non-sensory world” (Singer, par. 5). This observation makes sense because the only times the screen flips to vibrant color is when Damiel gets physically closer to Marion, the somber trapeze artist from the circus (Wenders, 00:35:17), and when he eventually becomes human (Wenders, 01:31:38). This never happens to Cassiel, however. In fact, when Damiel firmly admits his desires for becoming human, he and Cassiel turn around and notice that there is only one set of footprints behind them now (Wenders, 01:31:28). This is emblematic of Damiel’s transformation. The footprints and color of Damiel’s new life are representative of how life becomes more vibrant when one chooses to live in the moment. Cassiel’s constant black-and-white lens harkens back to how old Hollywood films use to only be in black and white. Like these old movies, Cassiel is still looking back instead of looking forward, following around old remnants of Berlin, and continuously recollecting on the people and scenarios he witnessed centuries ago.

           

It is those who tend to look toward the past rather than live in the present that live some of the most painful lives around. Both Cassiel and Damiel deal with individuals near death in the film. While Damiel chooses to comfort a victim of a crash through reaching out and petting his head (Wenders, 00:36:30), Cassiel tries to prevent a man from jumping off the top of a building. Damiel does not intervene from the impending death of the person he is with. Cassiel, however, completely tries to use his powers to get the person he is observing to not jump off the roof. He tries so hard to prevent this tragedy from occurring that when the man does jump, Cassiel screams in anguish at the top of his lungs (Wenders, 01:09:00). This is the only time in the entire film where Cassiel appears to show any emotion. He is upset because he had to witness someone willingly throw away their life. His reaction leads one to question whether this is the first time he has had to witness such a harrowing event. Cassiel takes a more preventative approach rather than just letting things happen naturally, as his counterpart would. While it is sad watching a person take their own life, this situation shows how we cannot always prevent the past from reoccurring or the present from occurring. We have to let things happen naturally, even if it will lead us down a painful path. Cassiel’s attempt to avoid this pain makes the viewer see how hard it is to not let the world unfold as it appears to do so. Sometimes, we have to let the chips fall where they may and just be there in the moment when it all comes crashing down.

           

The first scene of the film is Damiel looking over the city with a silhouette of his wings. The very last scene of the film, conversely, is Cassiel looking sadly over the city on the same building his counterpart was on (Wenders, 02:04:31). His friend is finally able to feel and experience all the things they never could do as angels, from drinking coffee, to running in the street, to feeling blood course through their veins. Damiel is clearly so much happier back down on Earth walking amongst the citizens and holding Marion in his arms. The difference between the two perspectives of the angels can better be described by Peter Handke’s poem, “Song Of Being a Child.” Handke writes about the mind of a child when it is young versus when it grows old:

Many people seem beautiful to [the child]

And now not so many and now only if [the child is] lucky

[The child] had a precise picture of paradise

And now can only conceive of it at best

[The child] couldn’t imagine nothingness. (41-45)

Lines 41, 43, and 45 perfectly describe Damiel’s attitude and demeanor; he sees all the beauty in the world and is so full of life because he is able to appreciate the “paradise” of the present. On the contrary, lines 42 and 44 seem to better fit Cassiel’s narrative. In the places where Damiel sees beauty, Cassiel only sees pain and what will eventually become future tragedies. He lacks the same amount of optimism for humanity that Damiel has. Similar to writer Michael O’Malley, Damiel genuinely believes that “humanity is naturally good… everywhere there are people who naturally feel inclined to help each other, even if they are strangers” (O’Malley, par. 2). Cassiel clings to the cynical mindset that based on the past events of history (especially World War II and the Cold War), humanity is not some sort of paradise. The past will only continue to repeat the same tragedies over and over again until the end of time. This is why he connects so much with Homer– his thoughts about how Berlin has come to ruins only further supports Cassiel’s misgivings about mankind.

           

It is understandable to be wary of the past like Cassiel. That is why we study world history, after all. Humankind has made so many erroneous blunders over the course of time that it makes sense as to why Cassiel would rather watch from a distance as he sees the world crumble and boil into an abyss of agony, bound to repeat the same mistakes we made centuries ago. One must not always be this pessimistic, though. There are so many beautiful things around us that if we continue to dwell on the past, we will forget about how amazing the present is. We may forget to relish in once-in-a-lifetime moments because we worry too much. This is no way to live life. We have an entire lifetime to worry about our past mistakes and the ones we might make in the future. That is why we must choose Damiel’s pole: the present. Appreciating the simple things about life, like Damiel desired for so long, is how we become more positive individuals. Each moment only happens once in your entire life, so live boundlessly and lovingly. Today is the youngest you will ever be from now on and the oldest you have ever been. Enjoy the precious present and take your mind away from the painful past.

Works Cited

Farajollah, Ariana. “It Is the Little Things That Make Life Big.” Blogspot. N.p. 21 Sept. 2017, http://giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2017/09/it-is-little-things-that-make-life-big.html. Accessed 3 May 2019.

Handke, Peter. “Song of Being a Child.” Peter Handke – Song of Being a Child, edited by Poetry Bar. Wordpress.com, 2009. Accessed 7 May 2019.

O’Malley, Michael. “Comfortably Numb with an Infected Humanity.” Blogspot. N.p. 31 Oct. 2018, http://giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2018/10/. Accessed 3 May 2019.

Singer, Leigh. “Five Visual Themes in Wings of Desire – Wim Wenders' Immortal Film about Watching.” British Film Institute, 14 Sept. 2016, www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/five-visual-themes-wings-desire-immortal-film-about-watching. Accessed 6 May 2019.

Wenders, Wim (Dir.). Wings of Desire. Perf. Bruno Ganz and Solveig Dommartin. Road Movies, 1987. Accessed 7 May 2019.

Awakenings into Adulthood via Wim Wenders’ "Wings of Desire" by Ariel Hannanian

Life can seem very difficult at times, given the existing circumstances. Furthermore, people tend to exaggerate negative emotions, dwell on the past, and remain doubtful of the future. Wings of Desire portrays human suffering and centers around the negativity, bitterness, and attachment to selfish desires that angels are witnesses of, but Damiel looks beyond these negatives to see qualities of love, forgiveness, and cooperation. Of course, this makes him yearn to be born, and his urge to live among these flawed individuals suggests there is an innate beauty in being human. Additionally, Damiel appreciates simple miracles that everyday humans overlook. This film serves as an optimistic perspective to the uncertain future of any college student who is searching for a vocation, love relationship, or deeper meaning.

Set in post-World War II Berlin, angels Damiel and Cassiel are symbols of innocence and observers of the emotional problems people face. They go about the ruins of the city and see suicidal, depressed, and unhappy people with misplaced emotions who do not possess the even-keel optimism the angels do. As Roger Ebert agrees, “The angels in Wings of Desire are not merely guardian angels, placed on Earth to look after human beings. They are witnesses” (par 1). The angels also say what other characters never say and provide a perspective no one else can.

The fact that only children perceive the immortal angels is significant since only children retain the innocence and timelessness necessary to see beyond the obvious. Whereas adults are jaded and only perceive the bad and the usual, “the kinter” recognize the good and the unusual. The message these silent angels put across in their infinite patience is for humans to wake up from their misery prisons and enjoy sharing life! However, increased awareness of life’s responsibilities during one’s college years marks the end of our childhood innocence and a new beginning where different priorities, goals, and obligations are made. Despite having to step into these “human challenges,” Damiel still seeks his transformation from angel to human form.

While in Berlin, he encounters Peter Falk, an American actor shooting a film in the city, and sees that humans do recognizes the positives. Furthermore, Falk’s view of the world compels Damiel to take action and become a member of society. Likewise, the film uses Peter Handke’s poem “Song of Childhood” as a tool to describe Damiel’s interactions:

“When the child was a child, It played with enthusiasm, and now, has just as much excitement as then, but only when it concerns its work. When the child was a child, It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread, And so it is even now” (Wenders 1:42).

This implies that we are all children of God and likely were content until awareness of adulthood and life’s realities came in and destroyed this homeostasis. Similarly, college is essentially a medium where we are forced into adulthood by exposure to new responsibilities as learners. So we are often in work-study-test-conquer mode and fail to appreciate simple pleasures like eating an apple. Mr. Falk, most commonly known as the TV detective “Colombo,” senses Damiel’s presence. Damiel becomes human and tastes coffee, smokes a cigarette, and bleeds after a body of armor falls on his head, but he is ecstatic at these feelings that the human race overlooks. This newly found appreciation gives the message of appreciating life also for simple miracles like love and nature, things that I may otherwise overlook.

Damiel finds a new purpose in life when he encounters a distraught trapeze artist and uses his powers to help her emotionally. He finds joy in helping others after his encounters with Falk, and this is the point when Damiel goes from passive to active. Damiel’s connection with the trapeze artist inspires him to become human. Despite all the animosity and selfishness of humans, Damiel yearns to become human because he only sees the good. While explaining his reasons to become active, Damiel states:

“To conquer a history for myself. What my timeless downward look has taught me … I want to transmute, I want to sustain a glance… a short shout, a sour smell. I’ve been outside long enough. Loving enough out of the world. Let me enter the history of the world. Or just hold an apple in my hand” (Wenders 1:14).

It is Damiel’s only dream for him to become human and exist rather than observe. The angel finds appreciation for simple human pleasures like food or pain or pleasure.

The movie cinematography did an excellent job of filming it in black and white with instances of color emerging as Damiel transitions from angel to human. His entrance into the world relates to the modern college student’s experience as our transition into the real world is to take an active role in society and not an entrance into bitterness. Damiel enters the trapeze artist Marion’s dreams and appears in person and in color when she falls in love. The fact that she meets the person literally from her dreams gives hope to the viewer of how the joining of two individuals to make both their dreams to come true: Damiel to be human and Marion to find true love. Damiel’s awakening connects to a college student’s awakening in that his transition from being innocent to becoming aware and active parallels the college transition from childhood to adulthood. 

This piece of cinematic art is a great deal more than a movie about two angels, one of whom finds a Hollywood true love. There is a rebirth of innocence when Damiel becomes human. Its message speaks to me in what my own guardian angel says to me about starting a career and a new life with my future family, hopefully. I was greatly reassured in the film’s ending in how Damiel, an angel who saw so much human suffering, still chose to join. His appreciation of humanity and the beautiful poem recited inspires us return to the wisdom of childhood and enjoy life to the fullest the way an elated child does. The angels in Wings of Desire break the social and emotional barriers we create for ourselves, and guide us toward a fuller, deeper, richer existence.

Works Cited

Ebert, Roger. “Wings of Desire Review and Film Summary” Great Movie. Roger Ebert, 12 April 1988. Web. 23 April 2016.

Wings of Desire. Dir. Wim Wenders. Perf. Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander, Solveig Dommartin. Road              Movies Film Production, 1987. SolarMovie. Web. 20 April 2016.

Paul Hoelen's Photography Meets Peter Handke's "Song of Childhood"

photo by Paul Hoelen

 

Song of Childhood

by Peter Handke

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

photo by Paul Hoelen