It should be no objection to say that it is a fantasy film. But think about this question: If you plan to make a film about angels, how can the performance be understood and convinced by audiences in both the Christian world and the non-Christian world? To ask from another angle, that is, without the experience of contact with angels and no previous experience to learn from, is Wenders' “angel” just a product of fantasy in his mind?
actually not.
Wenders’s setting of angels is poetic and rigorous.
"When God was extremely disappointed and finally prepared to abandon the world forever, some angels disagreed with his approach and stood on the side of humans, arguing that they should be given to humans again. Opportunity.
Because the plan was blocked, God seemed extremely angry and exiled the angel to the worst place on earth: Berlin.
Then God left.
These things happened in what we are used to today, "The end of the Second World War" "when.
Since then, the group due to" second angel rebellion "and angels on distressed trapped in this city, not only the release date in sight, and even the opportunity to re allowed to return to heaven at all.
they are cursed To be an eyewitness, you can only be a bystander forever, and will not affect human actions or intervene in the evolution of history..."
This explains why the angels in the film always stay in the world, and it also leads to thinking about the city of Berlin. .
And when you open the Bible, you can find that the angels in the film strictly follow the definition in Christianity:
first, let’s talk about the way of expressing the characteristics of angels. Angels mostly appear in human form, so the actors who act as angels are no different from ordinary people except for uniform braids and black coats, and their wings are quietly hidden at the beginning of the film. We can identify the reason for the angels from the crowd. In addition to their uniform attire, there is also the interaction between them. For example, in the library, the angels will nod to each other. We can easily distinguish what an angel sees from what a human sees because the director defines angels as indistinguishable from color. This is one of the most brilliant settings in this film I think. First of all, he emphasized the immateriality of angels. They also have no sense of touch, taste, or smell. At the same time, it is convenient for us to distinguish the angle of view between angels and mortals, because black and white lenses are seen by angels. (The opening is also black from the perspective of children. One may be that these children are also angels. Second, it may also imply that the pure in mind and the physically disabled are closer to God, because in the angel talk, "a blind man sees me" is mentioned. , Deaf-mute children also saw angels). After Damir turned from an angel to a mortal, what he saw changed from black and white to color. Before, there were two foreshadowings. Once in Marion's room, the angel was moved by her self-report, and the black and white vision turned into color. In a scene where the camera quickly and unsteadily passed through Berlin at night, the color angle of view turned to black and white again. It was the angel Cassirer watching the evil of Berlin at night with his calm eyes.
Angels can fly against the wind. The scene before the car accident in the film is fast approaching, and the fast playback of a group of tramps in Berlin at night actually shows that the angel can move fast.
Angels can help people. The approach here is very clever. First of all, angels can hear human thoughts. If in the beginning, the voice of countless people whispering makes the audience confused, then a long list of women watching TV, the children sleeping behind the sofa, stand at the ladder of the ladder. The woman who smokes, the monologue of the father who is worried about the child’s troubles, and the words that every passenger in the library and subway can hear, tell us the angel’s mind-reading ability very clearly. They can even hear the air. The sound of radio waves. (I circled the radio tower in the film and heard the voices of different radio stations) When the pregnant woman was in labor, the people on the subway were desperate and the young man was about to jump off the building, after the angel comforted them, their thoughts changed from pessimism to relative optimism, but they had to jump off the building. The young man jumped down, and the angel Cassirer let out a painful cry telling us that although angels can influence our thoughts, they are powerless in the face of people's actions. If you consider the background of the story-Berlin, the meaning will be "sublimated" to a sense of helplessness as to where to go from East to West Berlin.
Angels are spiritual bodies, without bones and flesh. So people cannot see them. But they are not without any form of body. People also perceive the touch of angels, which can be known by scratching the parts touched by angels. And what I had difficulty accepting is that the angels in this film have shadows, especially in the last Nick Dave concert, the shadow of the angel Cassirer changes with the stage lights, like angel wings, which can infer that the shadow of the angel is not a text. Des’s unintentional mistake, but his personal interpretation of angels “not without any form of body”.
The seemingly inadvertent arrangements are actually rigorous expressions. It is precisely because of these strict adherence and ingenious performance of the definition of angels that such a fantasy film involving religious concepts has not only been recognized by the Christian world, but also understood by us atheists.
In fact, I have been confused why the film chooses angels to express its content? Going back to the beginning of the film, the poem of "when the child was a child" runs through, and then the angel is standing next to the victory angel, looking down at the world with compassionate feelings. Perhaps the director has been trying to avoid using adults. From the perspective of reflecting on the mistakes made by adults during the World War, let’s use the eyes of children and angels to describe Berlin, a land full of wounds and confusion.
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