"Are you cold?" When a girl in a bright yellow one-piece pajamas asked Seth, I saw Seth's face A helpless expression. Seth is an angel - a myth of heaven. He has the ability that ordinary people can't have, and he can take anyone in the world - to see God. Seth can hear the sounds of nature at dawn, a superpower that ordinary people can't have. However, while God gave angels more superpowers, he also deprived them of the wonderful touch of the world they could perceive. They have no sense of touch and cannot perceive the beauty that exists in this world that can be touched. Angels don't fear, they don't feel pain, they don't get hungry... Likewise, they don't get cold, and they don't know what warmth is.
Seth would always ask a human what they loved the most before taking them away. I think this is a manifestation of his incomparable desire for human life. Because he cannot perceive the touch that human beings have, Seth can only indirectly learn that only human beings are by asking him about the things that human beings loved most during his lifetime. It has the warmest touch among its kind.
As with all fantasy stories, there is a turning point for the protagonist in every story. Seth's turning point was meeting a doctor named Maggie. This is an extremely stubborn woman who firmly believes that all patients who are operated on under her scalpel will never be taken away by God. She was so confident that one day a patient who had only undergone a minor operation on her hand died on her operating table. Maggie didn't believe, didn't believe her patients would die because of her incredibly dedicated and precise surgery. When Seth saw that Maggie kept performing CPR on the patient in order to save her patient, Maggie held the patient's heart in her hand and kept getting electric shocks. "No, he's not allowed to go anywhere. I won't let anyone take him." Seth hesitated for a while, and the place where Seth saw Maggie's gaze was exactly where he was. S thought she could see herself.
In the end, the patient was taken away. This is an unprecedented blow to the always confident Maggie, who doubts her ability as a doctor to save all lives. And Seth fell when he saw Maggie's firm eyes on the operating table.
Humans cannot see angels unless angels want them to.
As Seth's feelings for Maggie deepened, Seth's desire for Maggie to see his feelings became more apparent. Finally one day, in the hospital corridor, Maggie saw a man in a long black coat that was darker than the midnight sky reclining by the elevator. That's how they met. Seth knew all about Maggie, because he was an angel, and he could go wherever he wanted with his free will, and wherever Maggie existed, he could too. Seth knew everything about Maggie, and Maggie knew nothing about him. And even so, Maggie fell in love with the man who was behaving oddly—always in a long dark black coat, with big but ethereal eyes, never smiling, always asking questions that humans are accustomed to and he doesn’t seem to know. The problem.
Seth was so thirsty for touch that he always asked Maggie to describe all the touches she could feel, like pear juice melting in her mouth, the smell of breathing air, the touch of a handshake. It was always difficult for Maggie.
I have also tried to describe all the touches I can feel right now, only to find that all the words are so impoverished. I can't really describe all the touches I can touch, pear juice, touches, smells...I can't imagine how I'd survive without those touches. The best feeling between people is to be able to hold each other's hands, feel each other's warmth, or smell each other's breath and perceive each other's existence.
I think Seth really dislikes the superpowers he has as an angel that humans don't have. He can hear human thoughts, and while hearing human thoughts, he also has to accept some dirty and helpless thoughts of human beings, which adds a lot of burden to his originally clear heart, and he cannot reject it on his own. These filthy human thoughts, he can only accept unconditionally.
The most common scene in the film is Seth and his angel friend standing on the top of the city looking down. The image is very beautiful, the huge New York City is unobstructed because they stand high and the view is vast.
While Seth is an angel, he can't be with his beloved Maggie - unless he becomes human. And if he becomes a human, although he can have human perception, he also loses the ability to listen to the sounds of nature at dawn.
Seth finally decided to use his only freedom as an angel - free will - to fall from the heights and become human. Seth desperately wanted to be able to sense the touch that a human could touch, and he wanted Touch.
"Touch" is the most frequently used word in the film. The film always revolves around the perception of life derived from "touch".
When Seth finally became human after all the hardships and was able to be with Maggie and feel the touch that Maggie could perceive, Maggie died in a car accident.
Seth watched helplessly as Maggie died, in her arms. Before she died, Maggie told Seth that she would say "Seth" when the angel asked her what she loved most in life.
Maybe this is life, even if you care about one thing, if you violate the rules, it will eventually be subverted because of your violation. Maggie, because of Seth's violation, fell into the world and became a human, and died.
I can't imagine that the touch of every ordinary person can bring such great temptation to the angels. I remember when we were very young, teachers would always ask us what our ideals were. So there are always half of the children who say I want to be an angel, because angels have super powers and can control the life and death of human beings; angels have wings and can fly in the boundless sky. But how many people can understand how many hardships that ordinary people can't bear are hidden behind those seemingly glamorous things.
Maybe many people now complain about why their efforts are not always proportional to what they get. As the angel friend of Seth said in the film: "This is life." If in our life, "what you pay will be rewarded" is an eternal truth, then there is no ups and downs in life. What's more fun. We can predict the scenery of the next stop in life, and life will be short of surprises. Everything will become predictable. And this is not the life I want.
The reason why life attracts us to continue to exist is that there are countless unpredictable things in it.
This is exactly what "City of Angels" wants to tell us: life is full of such unpredictability, and even if there is a sad future, we will still be full of freshness in life and continue to be unpredictable. What you have survives, struggles.
If I didn't have touch, I think I'd choose to fall from heights like Seth, become human, and sense what they can touch, even now that I know in advance that doing so I'll lose as much as I get the touch My most cherished person.
- "What does it feel like to be warm?"
- "It feels good."
This is life.
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