With the help of the angel's overhead angle, the film shows us a city full of contradictions at the beginning, with both industrialized developed shell, dilapidated brick walls and dark sewers; it looks peaceful and busy, but it is full of rock music's restlessness, The embarrassment of all beings. From the side of the market street to the library, without the comfort of angels, people's faces will not see a trace of happiness, as if they are firmly ruled by the reality of suffering and the past.
And those angels, because of their mission, just happened to be able to run through the entire German history represented by Berlin. Angel Cassiel represents the past to a certain extent. He follows an elderly children's writer. Dialogues with Damiel always refer to history. The Soviet fighter jet crashed into the river 20 years ago, the Berlin Olympics 50 years ago, and Napoleon East 200 years ago. Expeditions, to the longer before the completion of Berlin and even - the Ice Age. I like the performance of Cassiel very much. After years of witnessing the vicissitudes of life, I have already sublimated to the state of a philosopher who has penetrated all things in the world, or has it been hopelessly calm about the endless self-destruction of human beings?
In this film, Wenders never intends to only think in the past. Damiel's feelings are the present and the future. As one of the sound motifs of the film, a poem about children appears repeatedly in In Damiel's monologue:
"When children are children, they always ask questions like: Why am I? And not you? Why am I here and not there? Where does time begin? Where does space end? Sunshine Isn't the life down here a dream? What I saw, heard, felt...isn't the world's coat?..." The
child's world was always close to Damiel, in the circus , Beside a series of embryo paintings that symbolize new life he fell into the world, there are children laughing and playing.
As a result, the moods of the two angels create a strong dramatic contrast that has significant overlap with social reality. If a nation that has been crushed by history wants to go to freedom, it needs to get rid of the heavy historical shackles, and it needs to be as innocent as a child. If I were to define a Symptomatic meaning for "Berlin Under the Sky", my interpretation would be: despite being in a land full of scars, there is still a beautiful existence in the world that is better than eternity, which is worth letting us throw away. Open the pain of reality and history to pursue.
At the end of the film, Wenders names Yasujiro Ozu, Truffaut and Tarkovsky by name. Especially Ozu, we can experience the more obvious Ozu feeling in the images we saw in "Under the Berlin Sky" and Wenders' earlier film "Paris, Texas". The angel's peaceful tone and expression full of loneliness are just like the complex emotions of the single parents (Iida Choko and Kasa Chizu, I have only watched these two Ozu films) in "Only Son" and "Late Spring". The comparison of Ozu, Truffaut, and Tarkovsky to angels adds to the film's extended sense of time in film history as a tribute.
Finally, I guess another reason why "Under the Berlin Sky" is famous in history is its strong sense of prophecy. Within two years of the film's release, Berlin was turned upside down. Wenders' devotion, or vision, seems to have been vindicated.
What impressed me most about the film was the achievement of photography. Wenders emphasizes the smooth movement of the camera to reconcile the composition and push the audience's eye, which is not complicated in terms of trajectory and the effect is natural and dramatic.
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