I remember first watching this one in a modern film class. I was not exactly excited to get into it, and I didn't expect anything good. If you simply described this type of movie to me, I'd avoid it. "Angels wander around the city watching people live." Wow, I'm so on the edge of my seat...

Then it started up and I was quickly drawn fully in. Somehow the Germans really know how to make an abstract film that I enjoy. The little bits of info we get on people's train of thought is balance well. We move from an old man remembering a life and focused on one goal. Then you hear a young person in their 20s all over the place with the multitude of interests/concerns.

The use of color is a great way to easily distinguish between a human's view and an angel's view. The black and white is so much calmer, separated without a multitude of options. But when you're a human you get so many more aspects to life. This simple change literally helps you naturally switch sides as the viewer.

Oh, and Peter Falk is in this. PETER FALK is in this. He is so great in everything. This is a guy that would be awesome to hang out with at any time. Is he even acting? I think he's just naturally that cool.

Depending on your mood, this movie is either great or extremely boring.

In the right mood, this is an existential movie that speaks very deeply about the sheer beauty of embodied existence --- especially when it comes to love expressed physically. The movie is very good at hinting at the poetry and longing of the everyday that we often neglect in the midst of our preoccupations and problems.

But on the wrong mood, this is a movie about the pretentious young people of the 1980s elevating their smallest emotional turmoils to existential heights, as if their tiniest experiences were somehow of supreme significance.

The plot is straightforward enough: an angel tasked with observing and recording human experience envies their ability to experience embodied life. Because he so envies this in them, he cannot fathom how humans can so easily miss the immense poetry of their being. The angel falls in love with a trapeze artist, and so, one day, he becomes human in order to both experience life as they do, and to find and love this woman.

Of course, in this movie, the experience of angels in the infinite presence of God is never even attempted to be shown, and so the viewer is led to side with the angel's description of human experience as inherently superior. In the American remake (City of Angels), at least some attempt is made to show that there is a choice involved here, and that an angel's experience has something going for it as well. That being said, however, the American remake does not do a great job of showing the intensity of embodied longing shown in this movie.

As expressed before, this movie is either existentially great, or boringly long, depending on your mood.

Bruno Ganz is on top form in this characterful study of desire - physical and spiritual. He is "Daniel" an angel invisible to all but his own kind (and to the innocence of children) who finds himself, with his colleague "Cassiel" (Otto Sander) policing the city of Berlin at the end of the second world war. Needless to say, there are no shortages of claimants on their compassion and they do what they can to help assuage the difficulties faced by the desperate and the struggling. When he alights on circus trapeze artiste "Marion" (Solveig Dommartin) though, "Daniel" starts to have doubts. His entire raison d'être starts to become compromised as he realises that there are benefits to being mortal, and human, and that being in love is probably the greatest of these. Up until this moment, his life has been intangible and he determines that must change. It's risky though... There are no guarantees! It's a bit of a slow burn so don't expect a great deal to happen quickly. It is, however, quite a potent tale of realising priorities and dealing with demons - some more apparent than others - told in a gradually accumulating, effective and emotionally charged manner. It is not in the least sentimental but just as the angels observe their subjects, we are invited by Wim Wenders to do the same with them - and it's surprisingly effective to watch as some of the questions and challenges facing him could easily be applied to those in the audience. The monochrome photography is also striking and well authenticates the scenario of a desolate and despairing post war environment. Perhaps serendipity takes too big an hand at the end, but... you decide.

**Essay on Sleepiness.**

When I decided to see this film, I did it for three reasons: the first is the participation of Bruno Ganz, a German actor that I appreciate and that I started to like after seeing him do excellent work in other films such as “The Fall”; the second is the enormous consideration in which this film has been held by a very high number of distinguished critics and specialists; the third is the fact that it's the first West German film I've seen in my life (as far as I know and that I'm aware of).

The script, however, couldn't be more tasteless than it turns out to be: the film begins with the turns and wanderings of two angels through the streets and places of West Berlin, observing people's daily lives. Damiel and Cassiel, each in their own way, are interested in human beings. They cannot be seen, except for children, and for a single individual who manages to talk to them, and one of them ends up deciding to become a human being and live a mortal life, on Earth, after falling in love with a woman. circus trapeze artist.

In fact, there is no lack of television or literary material about angels who fall in love with humans or who, for other reasons, give up their angelic life and become humans. It seems that there is, among us, a desire to humanize these creatures. In the wake of all this, the film makes a series of philosophical and metaphysical considerations that will only truly interest philosophers, or theologians, or writers in general. Wim Wenders is a director who appreciates this type of ultra-intellectual cinema, made for artistic cycles and festivals, never for the general public, who find it a good substitute for sleeping pills. Personally, I don't like this type of cinema, even though I recognize its artistic merit.

Bruno Ganz, on his journey, awakens to the beauty of humanity in an elegant way that borders on poetry. He sees beauty in the most trivial things, which we usually don't, not without an extreme artistic sensitivity that the common individual rarely cultivates. The actor couldn't be more competent in the work he does, and is skilfully assisted by Otto Sander, who has another angelic role. Solveig Dommartin and Peter Falk are also very good additions, with time to show value.

The problem with this film is really the excessively slow and cold way in which it unfolds and gradually exposes itself. The pace of the film is so slow that it becomes boring, and I confess that I didn't pay much attention to the permanent monologues. Things improve a lot when Falk enters the scene, giving movement to a bloodless and soporific plot. The closing credits, in German expressionist style, make a direct allusion to the cinematographic past of the city, and of the country, something that Wenders may have done as a tribute, or asserting himself as a continuer of the legacy of the past (which is not as modest as the first idea). Almost the entire film is shot in black-and-white, with cinematography that is very well achieved and worthy of merit. Colors are introduced later, becoming more associated with humanity, that is, with the way we see the world we live in. Original, well thought out. The film does not have a great soundtrack, betting more on monologues and very boring dialogues. Furthermore, the film is practically a city tour of West Berlin, a metropolis that has changed radically in recent years, as we know. The wall is there, even though it was purposely built for the movie and is not the real thing.