Wings of Desire

Hard to escape the impression that the angels in this film are mostly an extended metaphor for the camera. They don't do anything so crass as fly around. All of that is saved for the impressive crane shots around the library, across apartment blocks and over walls. That sense of floating omnipresence is communicated as much by the way the camera moves as the silent men in trench-coats hovering over the variously occupied people of Berlin.

What does it mean? Perhaps it's Wenders's way of trying to get across the way photography both reveals and distances you from the objects being photographed. Bruno Ganz isn't content with observing and recording other people's experiences. He wants to step into the frame and become a participant.

Not to get too David Thomson here, but it's no surprise that the angel's temporal desires become focused on a woman. She is a trapeze artist, already far more graceful in the air than Ganz could ever be. There's an interesting switch-around between the two, in that Ganz begins the film observing Berliners from the top of a cathedral, and ends it looking up at the object of his devotion. He trades omnipotence for submission, a transcendent (and silent) God for an immanent goddess. Wings of desire are liable to fall off and leave you grounded.

Object is the right word. I found Solveig Dommartin lovely but also absurd, the final consummation between her and Ganz close to laughable. It doesn't help that it occurs at a Nick Cave concert (that pompous vortex of toxic masculinity is not a sustainable model for romance). Her monologue is an egregious abuse of language, meaning and the viewer's patience. Wenders would have improved his film immeasurably if he had left the cod-poetry behind with the black-and-white, and tried to convey a sense of reality, with real people in it.

Paris, Texas

The first Wim Wenders film I've seen (Beyond the Clouds doesn't count – it was terrible anyway), and its the craft that is most immediately striking. The pace is on slow burn for most of the picture's running time, but interest is maintained by the central mystery behind the protagonist. The story has already happened, we just don't know it and have to settle for watching the consequences unfold.

Then there is the light. The first shots of the desert are technicolor western pushed to Black Narcissus levels of lushness. The colours of those location shots are postcard perfect. And as Travis slowly returns to civilisation the neon glow seeps in. The final shots of him in the parking lot wreathed in green fluorescent mist, of him driving bathed in tail-light red, felt like all of Refn's Drive compacted into a couple of minutes.

And then there is the actual story, not shown, but narrated, in a setpiece right out of David Lynch's repertoire except this is a couple of years before Blue Velvet. It feels like a confession – Travis and Jane taking turns in the booth. And their stories are not just theirs, but ours: star-crossed lovers, the cowboy, the private eye, the femme fatale, the whore. And buried beneath, a man, woman and child unable to make their family work under the weight of these roles they have to play.