Speaker 1: We're Tarvi Lorenzo and this is the Bitter Kitten Movie Club.
Speaker 1: Hellicitten's welcome back to another edition of the BKMC, which
Speaker 1: is a supplemental PSO podcast that we do every week,
Speaker 1: although we didn't do our regular PSO podcasts this week,
Speaker 1: but it'll be back next week. This week, we are
Speaker 1: taking a look at the at Vim Vendor, director Vim
Speaker 1: Vendor's art house classic from nineteen eighty seven, Wings of Desire,
Speaker 1: and typical of all of our BKMC pods, it'll be
Speaker 1: attached to a review of the film with trivia and
Speaker 1: videos and pictures and stuff like that. It's just a
Speaker 1: discussion followed up movie club because we wanted to follow
Speaker 1: the lines of a book club where we all agree
Speaker 1: to watch the same thing and then we all talk
Speaker 1: about it. I did not have this film on my
Speaker 1: initial list for the BKMC, but that is because I
Speaker 1: did not realize that it was available on hbox. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to come right out and say it's in
Speaker 1: my top three. It might even be my number one
Speaker 1: of all time.
Speaker 2: It is that's number one, that's your number one movie.
Speaker 1: I think it is my number one movie. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me about it is, and I want to
Speaker 1: unpack a little bit of that when we talk about
Speaker 1: this Is. I had not seen it for many, many years,
Speaker 1: and that was partially deliberate. We're going to dive into
Speaker 1: the themes on all of this, but I just want
Speaker 1: to say that this film I saw as a very
Speaker 1: young film student, and I did not understand the world
Speaker 1: because I was a student, and it rewired my brain.
Speaker 1: And as such, I did not want to revisit this
Speaker 1: film too often. I wanted it to sit in perfection
Speaker 1: in my memory and I have seen it many times
Speaker 1: over the years. But I saw it last month and
Speaker 1: it was honestly the first time I had seen it
Speaker 1: in over ten years, probably closer to twenty. And I
Speaker 1: remember I said to Lorenzo, tears in my eyes. I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's still beautiful. It's still And the thing is, you
Speaker 1: don't want these things to disappoint you when you come
Speaker 1: back to them months later in your life. And it didn't.
Speaker 1: But I will say this, I saw the movie last month,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was watching it casually and then
Speaker 1: I decided to put it on the on the roster
Speaker 1: for the BKAMC. So then I watched it again, and
Speaker 1: then I watched it a third time. So I watched
Speaker 1: it three times in one month, when I had gone
Speaker 1: probably twenty years without watching it. And when I was
Speaker 1: watching it with you last night, I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not watching this again for a while. Because what
Speaker 1: happens when you watch a film obsessively and this this
Speaker 1: comes down to why I didn't want to watch it
Speaker 1: too much. When you watch anything obsessively, it starts becoming
Speaker 1: less art to you and starts becoming more something that
Speaker 1: you can recite, something that you can see every flaw,
Speaker 1: every edit, every musical cue before it happens, and it
Speaker 1: becomes something else in your mind.
Speaker 2: And I don't think that's the intent of a director,
Speaker 2: you know, like the two, it depends in a point,
Speaker 2: I mean, in a certain way. I think. I think
Speaker 2: it's like looking. I mean, you can go back to
Speaker 2: Mona Lisa, you know, to see the paint a painting
Speaker 2: many many, many times, but it doesn't have the same impression,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think movies is the same. I mean,
Speaker 2: the first time you watch a movie, you have a reaction, right,
Speaker 2: and then subsequently, subsequently you have a different reaction where
Speaker 2: you watch it again and again and again it changes
Speaker 2: in your mind.
Speaker 1: And that is not a movie I want to change
Speaker 1: in my mind or in my heart. It means that
Speaker 1: much to me. If you've listened to the pop style
Speaker 1: of Manifest before, you might remember me talking about Neil
Speaker 1: Game and Sandman. And I was thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: it when I was rewatching this movie, because that was
Speaker 1: another piece of art that rewired my brain. And they
Speaker 1: really actually do have a lot in common. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain Gayman said that he was partially inspired
Speaker 1: by the among many other things, he was partially inspired
Speaker 1: by this film, like the Sandman, Wings a Desire is
Speaker 1: a story that and this sounds so trite, but it
Speaker 1: is a story about life, about the totality of life
Speaker 1: from childhood to death, from you know, all the pain
Speaker 1: and stupidity that comes in between it. And this starts
Speaker 1: for love. This starts for love and meaning in your life.
Speaker 1: So and Sandman is very much like that. Both of
Speaker 1: them occur on a rather like Goth scale. I mean,
Speaker 1: Wings a Desire is not a Goth movie, but it
Speaker 1: can easily be adopted by Goths, and it unpacks spirituality
Speaker 1: and the you know, the inner life, and that to
Speaker 1: me when I say it rewired my brain. The scenes
Speaker 1: of the angels in that library.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yes, it makes me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get choked up thinking about it. The idea
Speaker 1: that let's talk about the premise of the film first,
Speaker 1: although if you're listening, I'm assuming that you've watched it,
Speaker 1: and if you haven't, shame on you turn this off
Speaker 1: right now and go watch it. It is a spectacular film.
Speaker 1: It is not a perfect film. It's very much an
Speaker 1: art house film. It's very much a German art house film.
Speaker 2: Of the eighties, very much of the time.
Speaker 1: Yet it which means you may run into things that
Speaker 1: seem like cliches and stereotypes to you, but they were
Speaker 1: fresh at the time. And there are times when I
Speaker 1: think the film drags where he vendors takes too long
Speaker 1: showing his girlfriend doing a trapez act, or showing Nick
Speaker 1: Caves singing two whole songs on film because he just
Speaker 1: wants to unfold. So it's not a perfect film, right,
Speaker 1: But in terms of its themes and it's it's perspective,
Speaker 1: I think that is what makes it to me in
Speaker 1: many ways. It's not a perfect film technically, but it
Speaker 1: is a perfect film. Emotionally right.
Speaker 2: Uh, let's just go back here a little bit. And
Speaker 2: on I think it was the first date something like that.
Speaker 1: It was our first date.
Speaker 2: I was talking about how much I loved international movies
Speaker 2: for movies, and then you mentioned this movie.
Speaker 1: And on our first date, I said this was my
Speaker 1: favorite movie.
Speaker 2: Right, So I still remember that and you were so
Speaker 2: excited about it, and it is one of It's a
Speaker 2: great movie. I like m. Vanders very much, and he's
Speaker 2: a special director to me at least. First of all,
Speaker 2: he loves Peinabalchit, which tells you right there that Heino
Speaker 2: the Peinabusch is a choreographer ballet, German theater, choreographer German. Uh,
Speaker 2: and he loved her work and he ended up directing
Speaker 2: a documentary about her.
Speaker 1: Lorenzo told me he loved Peenabouche on our first date,
Speaker 1: just so you know, and then dragged me to.
Speaker 2: Say, I worship ping A Belus very very much. She
Speaker 2: has a very different approach to dance. Anyway, She's another story.
Speaker 2: But when I found out he loved her, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this man is a special And at the same time
Speaker 2: I have to mention that I I wanted to learn
Speaker 2: German and I had no money, so I went to
Speaker 2: the Good Institute and I said, I want to learn.
Speaker 2: Institute is like a school where you learn German. But
Speaker 2: it's more than a school. It's it's pretty much like
Speaker 2: a cultural cultural center where they promote German history, culture, everything, music,
Speaker 2: where it's everywhere. Where was the one you went to,
Speaker 2: it was actually in Europe. Uh. So I I wanted
Speaker 2: to study German, had no money, so I walked up
Speaker 2: to the front desk and I said, I have no money.
Speaker 2: I want to start German. What can I do? So
Speaker 2: they said, well, you can work here, volunteer here, working
Speaker 2: at the library or whatever, and then you know, you
Speaker 2: have your lessons for free. So that's what I did.
Speaker 2: But they didn't need anybody at the library. They needed
Speaker 2: someone at the film Attech, which is the film archive.
Speaker 2: This guy, crazy guy coming back from German Germany. He
Speaker 2: was in charge of the department and everything was a mess,
Speaker 2: so he needed someone to organize the movies, do everything.
Speaker 2: So that's how I became across this immense library of
Speaker 2: German movies and culture, and that's how I discover his work.
Speaker 2: And I remember at the time, you have I was
Speaker 2: in the center the entire time, and it was so
Speaker 2: German to be there. Everything was very German. And so
Speaker 2: when I watched the movie Last Night with You, everything
Speaker 2: came back to me, like the whole German environment vibe.
Speaker 1: Then everything about it, it just came back to me.
Speaker 2: The history of the people, the wall, the Berlin Wall, everything,
Speaker 2: everything just just came, you know, immediately in my head.
Speaker 2: So I think the movie is very very German to me,
Speaker 2: the movies very so German, very very very very of
Speaker 2: the time. And at the same time, the movie is
Speaker 2: is universal. I think the at least a message in
Speaker 2: a way.
Speaker 1: I think it is, yes, because it is a film
Speaker 1: about life, and it is partially a film about the
Speaker 1: pursuit of love, and it's also partially a film about
Speaker 1: the approach of death. And so yes, those are universal themes,
Speaker 1: but they are are told within a very specific setting
Speaker 1: with very specific people, and to me, that is part
Speaker 1: of the power of the film is you know, they
Speaker 1: did do an American remake of this called City of
Speaker 1: Angels and in Los Angeles with Nicolas Cage and Magryan
Speaker 1: had a very different vibe to it. It was more
Speaker 1: of a not a comedy. It was more of a romance,
Speaker 1: and it was less of a it was less about
Speaker 1: the larger themes that this film was about. But for me,
Speaker 1: it's settled the question can you make Wings of Desire
Speaker 1: in another city, And no, you can't. You can make
Speaker 1: a similar story. But Wings of Desire is about all
Speaker 1: of these larger universal things, while at the same time
Speaker 1: it is very much about the city of Berlin. And
Speaker 1: I should say that the title, the German title is
Speaker 1: something like Heaven over Berlin or something like that, the
Speaker 1: Sky over Berlin. It's not called Wings of Desire, so
Speaker 1: it is you're looking it up right now, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's like him a uber Berlin or something like that.
Speaker 1: So it's very much Yes. Is it the sky over
Speaker 1: Sky or Heaven over Berlin? It could be either one, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It's pretty much like it's heaven or Sky, can be both.
Speaker 1: And part of the part of the genesis of this
Speaker 1: was that of Ven Vendors had been living in America
Speaker 1: for several years. He had received a lot of critical
Speaker 1: acclaim a few years before this for his film Paris, Texas,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to go back to his favorite city
Speaker 1: his I guess it's his home city, Berlin, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to shoot a movie there, and when he got
Speaker 1: to Berlin, he wandered around the city looking for inspiration,
Speaker 1: and that's when he noticed that Berlin has all of
Speaker 1: these they're actually most of them aren't angels. They're mostly
Speaker 1: wing victories statues, that sort of thing. The most famous
Speaker 1: shot in the film is him on top of a
Speaker 1: wing victory statue in Berlin. But it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much substitutes, says an angel. And that's where he
Speaker 1: got the idea of angels looking down over the city
Speaker 1: of Berlin. And then he went and he he approached
Speaker 1: a German poet named Peter Hanky.
Speaker 2: Who Australian act.
Speaker 1: Oh, Australia, Austrian, Austrian, I'm sorry, name is Austrian. Austrian. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Austrian poet named Peter Hanky who did not. He's listed
Speaker 1: as a co writer on the film, but my understanding
Speaker 1: is that he he sort of guided vendors on the
Speaker 1: on certain scenes. He wrote the poem that anchors the
Speaker 1: whole films, such as the Song of Childhood, Song of
Speaker 1: child which I was crying as soon as I heard it.
Speaker 2: That is beautiful anyway, the.
Speaker 1: Line about you know when the child was a child.
Speaker 1: First off, let's unpack that when the child was a
Speaker 1: child is a sentence that implies that you never actually
Speaker 1: stop being a child, because it doesn't say when the
Speaker 1: man was a child or when the woman was a child.
Speaker 1: It's when the child was a child. And that, to
Speaker 1: me is the because the person who is reciting that
Speaker 1: poem is an angel, so from his perspective, people are
Speaker 1: never not children to him, right, They're just children at
Speaker 1: different stages of their lives, and which again kind of
Speaker 1: a beautiful, if a little condescending, but still kind of
Speaker 1: a beautiful perspective to have. And the line is when
Speaker 1: a child was a child, he sat cross legging and
Speaker 1: got up running And I'm like, oh, or he swung
Speaker 1: his arms while he walked, or he didn't make faces
Speaker 1: when you took a picture of it. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not quoting it exactly, but my point is.
Speaker 2: Well, you remember the line I die? I do like
Speaker 2: when they when the poem says when the child was
Speaker 2: a child, he did not know that he was a child,
Speaker 2: And that's the whole sense of it, you know, it's
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, when you're a kid, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't know anything. You know, and the world is
Speaker 1: so perfect to you and so exciting to you, and
Speaker 1: you you get up running, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: There's such a poignancy to that because as soon as
Speaker 1: you hear those lines, and like I said, I was
Speaker 1: a young man when I read when I first saw
Speaker 1: this film, but even as a young man, I felt
Speaker 1: the weight of time when those lines like yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't get up swinging my arms, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: get up running from across like it's.
Speaker 2: Such a great understanding of what a child is like
Speaker 2: and what we become, you know, when.
Speaker 1: What happens to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Because there's a line where it says, when
Speaker 2: the child was a child, apples and bread were enough
Speaker 2: for him, and that is that says so that that
Speaker 2: says so much of what we become as an adult.
Speaker 1: Such a beautiful poem.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I don't speak German, but I honestly think it's much.
Speaker 1: But it's beautiful, beautiful in German.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, beautiful, Especially the first line is just beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I told you I was last week. I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to get through this without crying because this film,
Speaker 1: Oh it means so much to be Okay, the scene
Speaker 1: in the library, I wanted to come back to that.
Speaker 1: And I was a film student when I saw this,
Speaker 1: so libraries were very much part of my life. I
Speaker 1: lived in them, like a lot of college students. And
Speaker 1: the idea that what I love about the scenes in
Speaker 1: that in that library is that it is teeming with angels.
Speaker 1: You go there and it is loaded with angels, right,
Speaker 1: and the implication, but bear in mind, the film never
Speaker 1: takes you inside a church. It never shows you anything religious.
Speaker 1: I never thought of that, never shows you anything religious,
Speaker 1: And I just loved the implication there that this is religion.
Speaker 1: But the pursuit of knowledge, people trying to expand their
Speaker 1: own minds and just swarming with angels while they're doing that.
Speaker 2: Oh, be so touched by the library is my favorite scene.
Speaker 2: I agree exactly because of that, because that was the
Speaker 2: time when that was the center of knowledge. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: wasn't computers, Yeah, I mean now we don't even have
Speaker 2: to search anymore. We just ask.
Speaker 1: To Yeah, we ask our phone, We ask our phones.
Speaker 2: I mean, but you know, I remember having to go
Speaker 2: to a library with a notepad and have to write
Speaker 2: everything down.
Speaker 1: I mean, people still do researchers say it's not the
Speaker 1: same the same.
Speaker 2: I mean that was the place the books were the
Speaker 2: only source of information.
Speaker 1: And I'm just I'm sorry, go ahead, no.
Speaker 2: And and that scene is so beautiful. First of all,
Speaker 2: the library, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It is and it still looks like that. I looked
Speaker 1: up all the locations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the library is beautiful. I can't, you know, I can.
Speaker 2: I can see why he chose that location because he's
Speaker 2: absolutely and the thought, the idea that this is the
Speaker 2: place where everyone is quiet, but at the same their
Speaker 2: minds are just running.
Speaker 1: This place is holy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just amazing to think that everybody there is thinking.
Speaker 2: It's their minds are running, but everyone is silent, right,
Speaker 2: and the angels are there to listen to them. So
Speaker 2: it's just it's amazing.
Speaker 1: To bear witness to them. And the scenes where an
Speaker 1: angel is pressing his head against another person's head, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get cry again.
Speaker 2: We're not gonna be able to get through the.
Speaker 1: If you've ever had intrusive thoughts, are racing thoughts or
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, those scenes are so soothing. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to get at, is that I
Speaker 1: love the scene in the library, because it elevates the
Speaker 1: pursuit of knowledge to something that is holy, while at
Speaker 1: the same time acknowledging that the mind can be a
Speaker 1: raging sea. And it just it pays attention to both
Speaker 1: of these aspects. And I don't even know how much
Speaker 1: of this was articulated by Vendors or his co writer,
Speaker 1: whether they really were looking at that scene and going
Speaker 1: and now we're going to talk about the human mind.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, there's a phone ringing. Lorenzo's going to go
Speaker 1: turn that off while I just keep talking, talk, talking.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I wanted to say is
Speaker 1: that I think the film does a beautiful job of elevating,
Speaker 1: elevating the inner life, that what goes on inside your
Speaker 1: mind is almost or equally as important as what you
Speaker 1: do when you're moving through the world. And as someone
Speaker 1: who spends a lot of time inside his head, that is,
Speaker 1: like I said, soothing and even a little revelatory. Why
Speaker 1: don't we take a short break and when we and
Speaker 1: we'll come back and unpack some further st up, Okay,
Speaker 1: we are back and we're talking Wings of Desire, And
Speaker 1: one of the things I now I want to unpack,
Speaker 1: and I promise. Now, I can't promise that I won't
Speaker 1: cry throughout the rest of it, but I don't think
Speaker 1: I will know because I think we unpacked most of
Speaker 1: the emotional stuff, although I will get to her speech
Speaker 1: in a bit. Okay. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: I find so so, so incredibly poignant about this film
Speaker 1: is that it's as we are as far away from
Speaker 1: the shooting of this film as those people were from
Speaker 1: World War two, right, And the film it is a
Speaker 1: film about how do I put this? And I actually
Speaker 1: said this before we turned on the mics, and I
Speaker 1: should have written it down thematically. The film is a
Speaker 1: film about a city that has lost and and a
Speaker 1: Berlin that is gone. The scenes of the old man
Speaker 1: played by Kurt Boys wandering through what used to be
Speaker 1: the pots Damar plots and was no man's land at
Speaker 1: that point, bemoaning what used to be there, the coffee
Speaker 1: shops that he used to go to and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And then you know, Peter Fok, who we
Speaker 1: haven't even gotten into, is they're shooting a movie and
Speaker 1: it's all Nazis, and it's all you know, unpacking that
Speaker 1: history there. And at certain times in the film they
Speaker 1: start using archival footage of Berlin, you know, when it
Speaker 1: was all bombed out, bodies in the street, right.
Speaker 2: And if you know a little bit about Berlin, the
Speaker 2: movie was shot in the eighties, and that's what Berlin
Speaker 2: looked like in the eighties.
Speaker 1: That was what I love about it.
Speaker 2: It looked like shit.
Speaker 1: It is such a snapshot at that.
Speaker 2: Time, kind of like New York, you know, sort of
Speaker 2: like in the eighties. Yeah, I mean, like like completely
Speaker 2: not I wouldn't say run down, but thing are like.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, they're right next to Soviet Russia.
Speaker 1: The city has been has been cut in half, and
Speaker 1: it never fully recovered from the war. This is only
Speaker 1: this is less than forty years after the end of
Speaker 1: the war, and it's interesting to.
Speaker 2: See the walls and all that, and knowing that the graffiti,
Speaker 2: yeah that a few years later, you know, it's all
Speaker 2: all come down. Yeah, it's fascinating. And I also think, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that's the other point that it really gets
Speaker 2: me when I watched the movie is the whole idea
Speaker 2: that you have to let things go, that you know
Speaker 2: things are not going to be the same, right, You're
Speaker 2: not going to experience things the way you experienced them before.
Speaker 2: I love the line about like you know you missed
Speaker 2: the ink when you read newspapers, getting hands, you know,
Speaker 2: dirty with the newspaper, inc.
Speaker 1: Stuff like don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: Not really if I mentioned that to a young person,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't even know what I'm talking about, right, So
Speaker 2: so yeah, this goes back to the point about the
Speaker 2: library and about this is a pre computer era.
Speaker 1: This is literally the height of the Cold War. Watch
Speaker 1: it's more the end of the Cold War, and it's
Speaker 1: a film about a city that no longer exists. People
Speaker 1: wandering through this city trying to find snapshots of when
Speaker 1: of the old Berlin, and now forty years later watching
Speaker 1: the film, that city doesn't exist anymore. I was shocked
Speaker 1: the first time I looked up the pots Dahmer plots
Speaker 1: because to me, for years, I hadn't been to Berlin.
Speaker 1: To me, if I heard the word the phrase pots
Speaker 1: Dahmer plots, it's that old man wandering around that you
Speaker 1: go look at it now and it is this stunning
Speaker 1: city center. Because of course the walls came down, Germany reunited,
Speaker 1: And that's my point. The Berlin that is showing the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven Berlin is as gone as the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five Berlin that they're all wandering around talking about.
Speaker 1: And there is a certain poignancy in that, Like all
Speaker 1: the little kids at that circus are middle aged. Now
Speaker 1: you know that young man who his parents were worrying
Speaker 1: about whether he was ever going to learn anything but
Speaker 1: rock music. He's probably a grandfather now. The old man
Speaker 1: is dead. Anybody over like forty five in this movie
Speaker 1: is probably dead. All the lead actors are dead, which
Speaker 1: is sad.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting, and of course they run so fast
Speaker 2: every line in their heads and every characters or every
Speaker 2: person's head, but if you stop and listen to them,
Speaker 2: they're so I love the little kid by himself watching
Speaker 2: watching the three kids play, and he said that must
Speaker 2: be nice to have.
Speaker 1: To have three Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's so observational. It's so good about getting inside the
Speaker 1: heads of every different kind of person. I also want
Speaker 1: to highlight the scene of the two angels and the
Speaker 1: convertible trading notes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so sweet because it's just let's trade notes
Speaker 1: of interesting things we saw people do today, And it's
Speaker 1: all about the unpredictability of humanity, the messiness of humanity
Speaker 1: and the fact that these two beings, and I do
Speaker 1: want to call out Bruno gonz and Otto Sander they're
Speaker 1: so good in this because I don't want to overstate this,
Speaker 1: but I think in the beginning of the film, in
Speaker 1: the black and white sequences, I think those two men
Speaker 1: are absolutely beautiful on camera. And I do not mean
Speaker 1: that in a sexual or romantic way. They're more like statuary, right,
Speaker 1: They just the way the cinematographer's name is Ala Khan,
Speaker 1: Henri Ali Khan, and the circus is named after him.
Speaker 1: He is a famous, famous cinematographer, the way he shot them, right.
Speaker 1: And I don't think there's a hint of deliberate homo
Speaker 1: eroticism in the film, but there is nonetheless an inadvertent
Speaker 1: homo eroticism because those two men are treated as companions,
Speaker 1: and in all of their scenes together, they come across
Speaker 1: like companions and you constantly see them doing things like,
Speaker 1: you know, touching their forehead to another man and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Where again, as a young man at
Speaker 1: a time when you know there was not a lot
Speaker 1: of queer imagery on in films, that actually hit me
Speaker 1: very very hard at the time, and I just love
Speaker 1: that scene in the convertible because they're both so gently
Speaker 1: amused by the people that they're talking about. There's so
Speaker 1: much affection in the angels, and I think that's what
Speaker 1: that's why it appeals to me so much. I think
Speaker 1: just I would when I say this film rewired my brain.
Speaker 1: What I mean is, I think I have spent the
Speaker 1: thirty plus years since I have seen this film wandering
Speaker 1: through the world assuming that there was some angel touching
Speaker 1: my forehead and soothing my thoughts or whatever, because that's
Speaker 1: what I wanted to believe. What else I well, we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about Peter Falk yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk about that, which which is quite interesting actually,
Speaker 2: that introduction. But I guess he wants to make the
Speaker 2: point of someone coming back and making a movie about it,
Speaker 2: you know, like.
Speaker 1: I think he wanted to put Nazis in the film.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do it in a way that
Speaker 1: allowed him a sort of rye commentary. There is and
Speaker 1: I think it's very very I don't know only a
Speaker 1: German filmmaker would do this. There's a scene where Cassiel
Speaker 1: the Otto Sander Angel is on the film set and
Speaker 1: he's watching all of these actors in Nazi uniforms unwrapping
Speaker 1: candy because someone gave them candy, and he starts laughing,
Speaker 1: and there is something absurd about that, absurd about all
Speaker 1: these Nazis in the middle of Berlin in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven eating hard candy.
Speaker 2: And isn't the kara supposed to be Jewish? I guess
Speaker 2: where his grandmother was Jewish?
Speaker 1: So Peter fowx yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I didn't actually get the reference to
Speaker 1: the grandmother until I watched it last night. And it
Speaker 1: contradicts the story, right, because the story is that Peter
Speaker 1: Fowk himself is an angel, so he wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: a grandmother.
Speaker 2: What about that? I was like, if he was an angel,
Speaker 2: like because he said I've been there something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think the story contradicts itself. And
Speaker 1: that's something else I want to point out is that
Speaker 1: a lot of this film was improvised. They did not
Speaker 1: have the story written out, just to give you an
Speaker 1: idea of how far they were willing to take things
Speaker 1: while they were shooting it. One of the deleted scenes
Speaker 1: is this massive pie fight between the two angels where
Speaker 1: they are little it's cakes, actually throwing cakes at each other.
Speaker 1: That doesn't belong in this story at all. They were
Speaker 1: just shooting shit and trying to form something out of it. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: I read that most of Peter Fawk's voiceover was recorded
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles months later, with Vim Benders on the
Speaker 1: phone telling him what to say. Oh wow, And I
Speaker 1: wondered about that. I wonder if the voices that you're
Speaker 1: hearing are even the same actors as the ones you're
Speaker 1: seeing on screen, Like when you're inside, that could be anybody,
Speaker 1: and they could have written those lines much much later.
Speaker 1: And the film does have that sort of shaggy, messy
Speaker 1: quality to it. But again, I think it works in
Speaker 1: service to the film because going back to my point
Speaker 1: about Otto, Cnder and Brune looking beautiful in the black
Speaker 1: and white scenes. The I think this is funny in
Speaker 1: a sort of black humor sort of way, but also
Speaker 1: poignant is that the minute damiel Otto Bruno Ganza's character
Speaker 1: turns human, he is suddenly much less attractive on film,
Speaker 1: and that is all very deliberate. The camera makes sure
Speaker 1: to show you his discolored teeth and his bald spot.
Speaker 1: They put him in the ugliest fucking coat you could
Speaker 1: ever like the dorkiest clothes you could. No, I'm sure
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven that looked very stylish. But he
Speaker 1: went from that classic black overcoat with the little Japanese
Speaker 1: warrior ponytailed, then the slicked back hair and the totally
Speaker 1: impassive face to this sort of dorky guy in an
Speaker 1: eighties jacket with a bald spot and his hair's too long.
Speaker 1: And I loved that because the implication there is humanity
Speaker 1: is messy. You're you're just gonna be messy right from
Speaker 1: jump and and it's actually a joy to watch him
Speaker 1: in those scenes. He is so unleashed in those scenes.
Speaker 1: What else do you have? Anything? I wanted to get
Speaker 1: into her, but before we do.
Speaker 2: Before we get to her, I think. I still think
Speaker 2: that the movie sends a beautiful message that you never
Speaker 2: know what someone is going through or what they're thinking,
Speaker 2: of course, and I think that's a great message. My
Speaker 2: mom said that to me, and it's nothing new. People
Speaker 2: say that all the time, but you know, sometimes you listen,
Speaker 2: you know, from somebody, and it clicked. That's when my
Speaker 2: mom said that to me once, and it clicked. This
Speaker 2: whole idea that you don't know what people are going
Speaker 2: through that you need to be a little more patient
Speaker 2: and a little more understanding. And that changed my mind
Speaker 2: when she said that, and I thought about it, and
Speaker 2: then then you watch a movie like that and you
Speaker 2: see it. You see it right there, people going through stuff,
Speaker 2: people thinking about a lot of things that you don't know,
Speaker 2: and you're sitting right next to them.
Speaker 1: The scene of the man on the bridge who's starrying,
Speaker 1: yessolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's I weep through that scene. It's beautiful. It's it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's it's great that it's black and white. I mean again,
Speaker 2: another movie that goes from black and white to color,
Speaker 2: and sometimes you don't even notice when they do.
Speaker 1: I think, I'm sure, but I think the color scenes
Speaker 1: are so vibrant that when they come in, my eyes
Speaker 1: are like, you know, it's like a present.
Speaker 2: I think towards the end, when he became human, I
Speaker 2: think it's all.
Speaker 1: The graffiti on those walls. Yeah, but gorgeous.
Speaker 2: But when she goes from black and white to color,
Speaker 2: I thought it.
Speaker 1: Was in her little trailer.
Speaker 2: I actually love that. It's beautiful about her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before we do, I do real quick. Nick Cave
Speaker 1: comes in at the end and gives us great rockstar
Speaker 1: performance and so young, and it's again so eighties is
Speaker 1: you just could not find a better snatchhot I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone thinks the eighties was like Madonna and Aquinette and
Speaker 1: all that other stuff, and it is, it was, but
Speaker 1: it was also people standing around in burned out the
Speaker 1: ballrooms listening to bands and nodding. There I means the
Speaker 1: bar next to it, yeah, I mean yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: famous hotel in Berlin and it was right on the
Speaker 1: edge of no man's land and they actually had to
Speaker 1: tear it down, which.
Speaker 2: You said, all right.
Speaker 1: So del Mont who is the treppe'z artist named Marion.
Speaker 1: She was also at the time Ben Benders's girlfriend, and
Speaker 1: I think that is so incredibly obvious in so many
Speaker 1: of her scenes, because it's like, Okay, this was shot
Speaker 1: by someone who's in love with her, and it works,
Speaker 1: of course, because the angel is in love with her.
Speaker 1: So I love how rough she is. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean that in a condescending way. Apparently she was a
Speaker 1: trained actress. I don't think she was, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think her boyfriend just gave her apart. But there again,
Speaker 1: it goes down to that sort of shaggy quality of
Speaker 1: the film is that none of her line deliveries are flawless.
Speaker 1: Nothing that she does, there's a certain lived in quality
Speaker 1: to it. Apparently she learned all the routines. Well she
Speaker 1: would have had to there now shot.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was gonna ask wow, because she does
Speaker 2: a good job.
Speaker 1: And that's why that. I mean, those scenes probably go
Speaker 1: on just a little bit too long, but again that's
Speaker 1: life you're I mean, the whole point of the film
Speaker 1: is that you know, life is messy, Life goes on.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to sit through a nick Cave song
Speaker 1: or a trap eas act. When I saw this film
Speaker 1: as a young man, I couldn't wait for those two
Speaker 1: characters to meet up. It's so the whole film, the
Speaker 1: whole the tension in the film is when are they
Speaker 1: going to meet up? What's going to happen when they
Speaker 1: meet up? And the film actually drags it out, so
Speaker 1: they're both walking the streets of Berlin at night and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, when are they going to encounter each other?
Speaker 1: And then the moment happens, and I can remember being
Speaker 1: a film student and being just what like just weirded
Speaker 1: out and disappointed it and even though I loved the film,
Speaker 1: but Vendors doesn't have them rush into each other's arms.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but she pushes him away before
Speaker 1: he tries to, you know, before he can even kiss her,
Speaker 1: and gives this long ass speech. Now again, I've said
Speaker 1: this earlier in the pod. You could take a less
Speaker 1: charitable view of this film and be like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: it's nothing about art house cliches. You know, people are
Speaker 1: giving these long speeches about love and nobody's acting like
Speaker 1: a real person. But I don't think, how do I
Speaker 1: say this. I don't think that scene is meant to
Speaker 1: be realistic at all. And I'm not even sure you're
Speaker 1: supposed to read it as something that actually happened the
Speaker 1: way it happened. Right, These are her thoughts, These are
Speaker 1: every and I do think that one of the great
Speaker 1: things about the film is that when it gets inside
Speaker 1: people's heads. I don't know what it sounds like in
Speaker 1: your head, but I'm like, yeah, that's what it's sounds
Speaker 1: like in my head, of course. I mean, your thoughts
Speaker 1: are just ricketing back, ricochetting back and forth. You're jumping
Speaker 1: from thing to thing, and I do feel like that
Speaker 1: speech she gives is her thoughts becoming verbalized.
Speaker 2: That's how I read it. I read it as as
Speaker 2: the scene fruse in a way, and it's.
Speaker 1: Just her, just her talking, although he's listening to her.
Speaker 1: And what I loved in that's that is a scene
Speaker 1: that actually rewired my brain too, because again, when I
Speaker 1: was young and I saw this film, I had never
Speaker 1: been in love, and I didn't know what love was.
Speaker 1: I wondered why she was saying some of the things
Speaker 1: that she was saying, and some of them sound that
Speaker 1: she talks. She talks about lonesomeness and and and being
Speaker 1: lonesome with another person. She talks about how the two
Speaker 1: of them are essentially everybody in love in this moment.
Speaker 1: We represent everybody on the precipice, right, I'm part of
Speaker 1: what I got from that speech. I do think you
Speaker 1: could get a lot of I think it's something that
Speaker 1: everybody could walk away with a different interpretation. But what
Speaker 1: I came away from with that from that speech was love,
Speaker 1: finding real love in your life, real true romantic love
Speaker 1: if you've been looking for it, because not everybody needs
Speaker 1: romantic love. And I think the film makes it very
Speaker 1: very clear that these two characters were searching, They really
Speaker 1: were searching for that person. And she finally finds the person,
Speaker 1: and her her reaction is to sort of mourn what
Speaker 1: she's giving up, right, And I actually found that such
Speaker 1: a mature and fascinating way to look at love, and
Speaker 1: I do think it has informed my view of love
Speaker 1: over the years. Is that when you are yearning for it,
Speaker 1: you are one kind of person, right, And then when
Speaker 1: you find it, who are you going to be? And
Speaker 1: what do you do with the person that you want
Speaker 1: if you are no longer yearning and your whole life
Speaker 1: was about yearning? Who are you now?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And there's a certain fear in that. There's a certain
Speaker 1: sadness in that. And as she says, and it always
Speaker 1: makes me cry when she says it, I'm ready, right,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to give up the person that I was.
Speaker 1: I'm ready to you know, become another person under this,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever this is.
Speaker 2: It's scary, and I think it connects with the with
Speaker 2: the with the movie as a whole, not just you know,
Speaker 2: finding someone or finding love and having to give up
Speaker 2: your old, you know, previous life, less for itself, prove yourself.
Speaker 2: I mean that goes and the movie makes a point
Speaker 2: that that can go to anything like not just a person,
Speaker 2: but but your life. Something stuff you had in your
Speaker 2: life that you don't have anymore, right, you know, you
Speaker 2: move to a different country, you move to you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, a job, whatever things you used to do, like.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that
Speaker 1: some of the people that we check in on there's
Speaker 1: people moving in to apartments and canting walls. There's someone
Speaker 1: whose mother died and he has to get rid of
Speaker 1: her effects. It's about that. It's about the way you
Speaker 1: moved through life and make changes along the way, and
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 2: To let that go. To let that go, you don't
Speaker 2: have to forget it. You don't have to, you know,
Speaker 2: pretend that it never existed, right, but but you have
Speaker 2: to let it go and move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe we're done. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: in today's review, so please go and check that out
Speaker 1: at the site, including some supplemental material. I've included the
Speaker 1: Song of Childhood poem and the Nick Cave performance and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But it's still in my Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: my number one. It's a beautiful it's my number one.
Speaker 2: I just read here that she practiced for eight weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was she tragically died very young. I
Speaker 1: know they all more time. She died at like forty
Speaker 1: five heart attack.
Speaker 2: At the age of forty five. She also she made
Speaker 2: another movie with him, which is she did which it's
Speaker 2: it's a movie that I like very much. It's called
Speaker 2: Until the End of the World.
Speaker 1: But anyway, and there is a sequel to this film, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: which I have never seen, and I don't know. I
Speaker 1: have no fire. I never had a desire to see.
Speaker 1: Interesting and I've read what it's about and I'm like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this film sits perfectly. It doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: reinterpreted or updated or anything. It is so very of
Speaker 1: its time, very also so universal in what it's saying
Speaker 1: about life and love and death and just the process
Speaker 1: of living, the messiness of living.
Speaker 2: All right, I think that's it right if you know
Speaker 2: anything about Berlin, And like I said in the eighties,
Speaker 2: it's in every frame of the movie.
Speaker 1: It really really is. And I have never been to Berlin.
Speaker 1: And I told him last night, I was like, We're
Speaker 1: going to Berlin because I just want to see some
Speaker 1: of these places, even though I know they're not there anymore,
Speaker 1: or they don't look like that anymore.
Speaker 2: You need to see them.
Speaker 1: The park where they shot the circus, where they're all
Speaker 1: packing up and everything, it's still there. It's still it's
Speaker 1: a city park. It's all grass now instead of mud.
Speaker 1: And they have a huge mural of an elephant on
Speaker 1: the back wall, which I just I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's related to it, but it has to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, all right. We will be back next week
Speaker 1: with you know what, I don't even know I think
Speaker 1: we're doing. My name is Dolomite. I think that's the
Speaker 1: next one on the schedule, and we will be back
Speaker 1: on hopefully on Monday with a PSO General PSO podcast.
Speaker 1: So until then, take care of you. So let me
Speaker 1: mean it.
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye