Indeed, the angels in Wings of Desire appear exhausted and haunted by their helplessness. In a huge modern style library, scores of people hunt through books for information about their past and present, as if divorced from the details of their condition. Everyone in this Berlin seems befuddled by their existence in the divided city.
Marion, a trapeze artist, played by the late Solveig Dommartin, flies above the ground, but doesn't see more than any of the other mortals from her vantage point. She utters one of the film's pivotal lines that seems to express the wish of almost everyone around her: "I'll find out who I've been and who I'll become."
Disturbingly, explicit images of the bombing of the city from World War II filter in and out of the film at unexpected times. Peter Falk plays himself in a movie that is being filmed within the film about an American private detective during World War II who is in Nazi Germany to find someone who has been killed in the bombing. It's another layer of unreality blending with another image of loss and confusion that contributes to the sense that these people of the city are not just confused, but a people sure only of their dislocation.
—Wm. 15 November 2010
