Wings of Desire

Part romance, part comedy, part meditation on matters political and philosophical, Wenders' remarkable movie posits a world haunted by invisible angels listening in to our thoughts. Such plot as there is concerns two kindly spirits (Ganz and Sander), posted to contemporary Berlin, who encounter a myriad of mortals, including an ageing writer blighted by memories of a devastated Germany; actor Peter Falk, on location shooting a film about the Nazi era; and a lonely trapeze artist, with whom Ganz falls in love, thus prompting his desire to become mortal at last. A film about the Fall and the Wall, it's full of astonishingly hypnotic images (courtesy veteran Henri Alékan), and manages effortlessly to turn Wenders' and Peter Handke's poetic, literary script into pure cinematic expression. Masterpiece? Maybe not, but few films are so rich, so intriguing, or so ambitious.