DVDs in Review

Wings of Desire (Blu-ray)

Title: Wings of Desire (1987)

Release date: February 22 2010

Certificate: 12

Format: Blu-ray (also available on DVD)

RRP: £19.99

Rating: 5/5

'Wings of Desire' could very well be the greatest film that Wim Wenders has ever made, and that's saying something. Easily brushing shoulders with his existential Americana road trip masterwork 'Paris, Texas', 'Wings of Desire' benefits from a far more cohesive story and accessibility, but one which takes its viewers in unexpected directions.

Remade loosely as the glossy Nicholas Cage/Meg Ryan Los Angeles romance 'City of Angels', this original version is set firmly in West Berlin during the 80s, a far grimier, darker location that somehow makes the idea of angels seem more realistic.

The general plot sees an angel who is tiring of spending his life observing and listening to the woes of Berliners, decide to give up his immortality when he falls in love with a woman who can't even see him. Bizarrely, 'Columbo' actor Peter Falk crops up as himself confessing that he was once an angel too.

This idea of unrequited love due coupled with visual impairment has worked wonders for another urban piece of screen poetry – Charlie Chaplin's 'City Lights' from 1931. Wenders is another innovator of cinema, and one who certainly isn't afraid of nostalgia if it can bring something new to his films.

Like Powell and Pressburger's similar fantasy 'A Matter of Life and Death' the film's (excellent) cinematography shifts from monochrome to colour dependent on the perspective of the character – in this case, the mortal humans see things in colour, further cementing what the immortal angels are missing. They have no colour in their lives.

This is an interesting method – usually films that deal with the afterlife, angels, heaven and so on assume that this mysterious other world will be full of colourful clouds and sun, bursting with flowers and harps but to present this mystery as a series of flat greys perfectly adds to the angels' longing to make contact with humans.

In short, it's a sly way of showing that we have plenty to be thankful for and perhaps our heads shouldn't be in the stars yearning for something mystical. Perhaps there are other heads in the sky looking down at us in wonder.

Wenders has crafted a life-affirming yet dry film that offers unique insights on mortality. See this in its blistering new Blu-ray print and then seek out the great sequel 'Faraway, So Close!'.