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.
Some moments of real beauty here. Strange to see Bruno Ganz in this role after only knowing him from a thousand memes (and the very good film from which they come), but he works perfectly here. There’s an aching tenderness in his performance that really hits the heart. The poetic script didn’t always land for me, but the poetry in the images certainly did.
This is not a movie, this is an art project. But I'm not very fond of this kind of art.
Great concept, great setting, beautiful photography. I just didn't care about the internal monologs.
The original title of the film is Der Himmel uber Berlin.
Review by ltcomdataBlockedParentSpoilers2017-02-12T22:55:42Z
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.