Wings of Desire
classified 12 SPlease note: This was screened in Nov 2015
One of cinema's most hauntingly beautiful city symphonies, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire transcends concrete barriers to explore a Berlin of the imagination. A dispassionate angel stands atop a statue on a winter morning, watching over Berlin, he desires nothing more that to be human. His name is Daniel (Bruno Ganz) and he renounces his pastoral care of the city's sad and lonely (and the immortality that goes with it) to find love with trapeze artist Marion.
Like Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (which also screens as part of LOVE on Sun 22 Nov at 12:00) the afterlife in Wings of Desire is a world in monochrome. Only the living can see in full colour and it is their lives, with their moments of sorrow and joy, that Wenders captures so eloquently. A film about the wall and the fall, it's full of astonishingly hypnotic images (courtesy of veteran cinematographer Henri Alékan) and manages effortlessly to turn Wenders' and Peter Handke's poetic, literary script into pure cinematic expression.
Preceded by a specially recorded audio piece recorded live at Paisley Abbey, by musicians Tut Vu-Vu and artist Kathryn Elkin, also featuring the Paisley Abbey Choir, Hausfrau, Ben Ashton and pierres de lumière. The piece was commissioned by Glasgow Film Festival as part of the BFI LOVE Season.