German Cinema Berlin
Berlin is a city of great flux. Before the start of World War II, it was a capital of culture, a city alive with cutting edge art and cinema, pulsating with sexual liberalness virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. It was a beacon of sinners and sainthood, a place where art, politics, and decadence coexisted, for the most part, symbiotically. But by the end of WWII much of the city had been destroyed by the Allied bombing in the latter part of the war, and the friction between the Allies (France, United Kingdom, and the United States) and the Russians pulled the city apart to form West Berlin and East Berlin, respectively. Such political boundaries separated families and lifelong friends, and the bombings had destroyed streets, shops, neighborhoods and communities that were still alive in the memories of those ho had lived there in the early part of the 20th Century. Once a great city was reduced to near rubble, and the geographic and cultural borders would signify a worldwide struggle that would become known as the Cold War. This historically unique situation led to Berlin developing into both a difficult and extraordinarily culturally robust city.
In this essay, two films made by German directors will be examined in order to explore the culture and historical situations found Berlin before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first film to be analyzed is Wings of Desire made in 1987 by Wim Wenders, a few years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The other film, Run Lola Run, was made over ten years later by Tom Tykwer, still at the beginnings of the reunification process going on in the city and in Germany as a whole. Through these two films the cultural and political situation of Berlin will be analyzed, determining both similarities and differences between the films and the city from which they were born.
Wings of Desire (1987)
Wings of Desire is a poetic film about angels in Berlin who are observers of people living their lives around them. The angels watch these people, listen to their thoughts, and stand with them in the intimate space of those thoughts and other deeply meaningful situations in their lives. But they don't actually interact with the people. One angel Cassiel (played by Otto Sander) comforts a man contemplating suicide. Yet the man jumps anyway and the angel cries out in desperation. While they cannot immediately affect their surroundings, the angels do have an effect on people, if but subtle. At one point a man on a train is confused and depressed but another angel and the protagonist of the story Damiel (played by Bruno Ganz) comforts the man gently. Instantly the man becomes encouraged, his spirit uplifted and his thought pattern changed. Gently his outlook improves, and the angel feels satisfied. An even more profound case of this is found with the trapeze artist Marion (played by actress Solveig Dommartin) who Damiel falls in love with. He takes particular interest in her, affecting her more strongly and profoundly both during the day and in her dreams. In fact it is Marion who ultimately drives Damiel to become human so that he can experience what it is like to be human and to know what exists between a man and a woman. Ultimately he succeeds in uniting with her, discovering what no angel can know while the constant observer.
Wenders began work on the film in 1985, after having been outside of Germany for ten years. This return helped to give him a new perspective on the city and the country generally. In this newness he was able to develop in a different way the relationship of Germans with themselves, and of Berlin with Germany:
“Sensing the importance of Berlin both as a bridge to the past and as a pivotal city for peaceful coexistence in the world, he arrived at the idea for the film: angels living in Berlin preserve the memory and even presence of Germany's history, while helping the inhabitants bear the burden of their nation's past,” (Cook 1991).
Cook suggests that the angels are not just comforting human beings - they are comforting Germans as they continue to process the past and further develop their own identities post-WWII yet still during the presence of the Berlin Wall. This sense of ‘Germanness' in the experience of the angels stems from the beginning of time, thousands of years before the first stone of Berlin was laid. The angels recount a time when only buffalo roamed the banks of the river.
This situation the angels are in parallels the disconnect found inherent with the city. There is a sense of a loss of innocence throughout the film, as it becomes known that the children are the only ones who can see the angels, and the angels seem to value the perspective that children have - one that seems to be lost as they grown into adulthood. This in part is due to the loss of innocence certainly in the Second World War (if not in the first). Germany as a beacon of culture, with Berlin being one of the centers of such power, was obliterated by the rise of Hitler and the ensuing Holocaust. Forever in German history will Germans bear the weight of this atrocious period of human history. In addition, the plethora of movies and other cultural products made to help understand, and possibly capitalize, on this period has resulted in a linkage of German culture, language, and people to this dark period in human history, disseminating in to the rest of the world. Children in Wings of Desire can be seen as the Germany of Bach, Beethoven - of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and Nietzsche. They represent the Germany of high culture and values, of art and creativity, far from the ugliness and destruction that would ensure. That from this tradition grew a monster is a parallel with the transition from childhood to adulthood. In the film we see beautiful little children with big eyes, laughing and playing in the streets or at the circus, looking in awe at the world around them. And in adulthood - early adulthood, at that - we see people on the streets of Berlin as prostitutes, or preparing for suicide. What happened to these idealistic children? What happened to this German culture? This is the thought that drives the images.
Wenders' original concept for the film was this:
“When God, angered by mankind's inability to learn from the past, was about to leave humanity on its own in 1945, some of the angels intervened, pleading that mankind should have one more chance to redeem itself. Angered by this intervention, God banished these angels from heaven, exiling them to the desolation of Berlin in 1945. There they were doomed only to observe the follies of human existence, unable to intervene in the course of events,” (Wenders in Cook 1991).
While the finished product doesn't focus so much on the plight of the angels, the idea that these angels, in some sense, exist out of the belief that humans will, eventually, learn from their mistakes, is central to the broader vision that Wenders suggests. The old man in the film, who first appears climbing the staircase in the library, represents the city of Berlin as a whole, and in one sense a combination of Berlin's cultural and destructive past, and the will to create anew in the future. He is from another generation before the rise of Nazi Germany. As he talks of Potsdamer Platz he recalls sipping coffee and watching people and shops and stores he used to frequent, of the trolleys and buggies and his own car that he used to drive. And then he recounts the growth of (presumably) Nazi flags in the Platz, and also when people started to become unfriendly. He senses the angels when he talks and works, and is more like the children in his thoughts. He says: “If mankind loses its storyteller, it loses its childhood.” Mankind here is indistinguishable from Berliners specifically. As he strolls the wasteland that is no longer the Potsdamer Platz, he muses: “I will not rest as long as I have not found Potsdamer Platz.” What he searches for is youth; indeed, for the Berlin, and the Germany, that lies under the rubble of the Nazis, Communism and Berlin Walls. The man signifies the very crossroads that Berlin as a city and Germany as a whole finds itself as, and the sense of determination for a better future that the angels believe in.
In the end, Damiel - the constant observer - enters the world of humans and embraces the trapeze artist with whom he has fallen in love. In this case their union signifies two worlds united. This childlike unification is born not just from the past, but also from the beginning, a return to a world long before tanks and concentration camps. Marion is lost in the contemporary world, adrift but with the heart of a child. It is also significant that she is not German - indeed she is from France, a country possessing friction between Germany and which controls part of West Berlin. As an outsider she has a different perspective on the city - and perhaps because of this is able to retain the youthfulness that so many Berliners seem to have lost. When the two finally meet, she speaks the same words that Damiel suggested only children speak of; thoughts that only children think. She is the embodiment of the soul of Germany that has been lost in the heavy history, and the unification of Damiel and Marion suggest the bright future of the city. Yet while there is optimism, Wenders' Berlin of 1987 is still mired in the past, lost, and unsure of what the future might hold.
Run Lola Run (1998)
In Run Lola Run a different approach is taken to the identity of Berlin, in a very different moment in history. It has been almost ten years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it the rebuilding of German identity and that of Berlin. The fall of the Wall is in the past and optimism flourishes in the city as it moves to reclaim itself from the past. Director Tom Tykwer captures this essence quite well in this changed city. The film is about a woman called Lola (played by Franka Potente) who has to reach her boyfriend Manni (played by Moritz Bleibtreu) in twenty minutes in order to prevent him from robbing a supermarket and thus ruining their life together. The entire film is based around Lola reaching him in time. But the film is also about choices. Lola tries and fails in her mission, and thus the storyline rewinds and plays again until she is able to succeed. In Tykwer's Berlin, Berliners have the ability to change their future - to change the course of their lives. The German will to change their future is found inherently in Lola's saving her boyfriend from what would be a self-defeating act. However it is interesting to note than in this progression there exists a return to the past. When Lola re-runs the race to Manni, it is symbolic of the city of Berlin returning to the past to build upon the future, found, for instance, in such places as the Reichstag. Lola has to acknowledge the past in order to succeed in the future, even while the future seems to be coming at light speed.
Tykwer's Berlin exists in the center of Globalization, affecting it and being affected by it in ways as profoundly as any place on the planet. As Lutz Koepnick writes, the identity of the city is shaped not only by the past but also by the future in the wake of Globalization. Identity, nationality, and interpretation of the past are all in a state of flux from the recent past and the immediate future:
“Tykwer's moments of standstill are symptomatic interventions foregrounding how recent processes of globalization reshape our experiences of time and space. Rather than merely reading these moments as expressions of a profound human need for extended structures of temporality … Tykwer's aesthetics of standstill serves the purpose of negotiating post-Cold War desires for new forms of localization amid rapid processes of spatial shrinkage and deterritorialization, (Koepnick 2007).
Run Lola Run exists in this state of great change found in Berlin at the time. The city is not mired in the past, where Berlin Wall-era Germany seemed to be, but instead is at last negotiating its place in the future. As the Cold-War era fades, the future is up to the people of Berlin.
It is interesting to note that within Lola's run, she physically bumps into other citizens of Berlin, and in these moments she is able to catch a glimpse into the lives of these people. In one instance someone wins the lottery, and in another, dies in a car accident. As Lola ‘re runs' her race, she meets the same people and see different outcomes. Thus is the seeming randomness of people's lives, the ceding of fate to powers far beyond each of them. One slight alteration can lead to death or great fortune, and while this is seemingly overwhelming, Tykwer frames it to link such chaos with a sense of a bond between people, a sense of humanity and compassion: A moment, in the rush of the race, to connect with those around. The utter randomness that seems to exist in Tykwer's Berlin is a point of connectivity, and the resulting empathy is the way to deal with the randomness. Moving forward together - as seen in Lola and Manni - is the way toward Berliners ultimately transcending the mire of WWII toward a greater future.
Conclusion
Both films have in common an intimate human portrait of those living in Berlin. Whether angels give comfort or the snapshots into the fate of those around Lola, both films show a sliverlighting into the lives of others. In Wings of Desire the angels don't have much of an influence. There is a lovely feeling surrounding them, but aside from subtleties they don't really interact - in fact the angel who becomes human seems only to do so not to help others but to experience life for himself. In a sense it is a selfish act, even if he does deserve it. The angels observe and feel, but they are primarily bystanders. Therefore in Wings of Desire, the idea of transcendence of the Berlin Wall and the division inflicting the country is seen as more dreamlike, with many hurdles to be overcome. Indeed, the storyteller still has much work to do. In Run Lola Run there is a sense of control over one's destiny - that determination can reverse, or at least alter, the future. In Lola there is a sense that the will can overcome any destiny laid out before her. This echoes the time in Germany and in Berlin, when the country is finally united and with this a sense of freedom exists that didn't in the Berlin of Wings of Desire. This central difference in the two films reflects the social and historical differences even in a period of ten years between the time, the two films were made. While the Potsdamer Platz may not have yet been redeveloped, or the storyteller written all his stories, the future of the city, unlike the past, is in the hands of the Germans themselves. Wings of Desire is mired in the past as the characters struggle with it directly. Run Lola Run transcends Wings of Desire, progressing toward the future while borrowing from the past. Lola, and Berlin, remake themselves as the movie progresses. In the end, in such randomness, all that can be done is to build a future from the past - upon the ashes of monsters and giants. Ultimately the bridge between Wings of Desire and Run Lola Run represents a strength of modern German culture found in Berlin: The strength to face a negative past and from it, create a positive future.
References
Cook, Roger. “Angels, Fiction, and History in Berlin: Wim Wenders Wings of Desire.” Germanic Review Winter 1991, Vol. 66 Issue 1. New York Public Library: Academic Research Premier.
Kopenick, Lutz. “Free Fallin': Tom Tykwer and the Aesthetics of Deceleration and Dislocation.” Germanic Review Winter 2007, Vol. 82 Issue 1, p.7-24. New York Public Library: Academic Research Premier.
Bibliography
Nikifarjam, Omid. “Wim Wenders.” New Statesman Vol. 136 Issue 485: 38. New York City Public Library: Academic Research Premier.
Kolker, R., Beicken, P. Wim Wenders. Cinema as Vision and Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge
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