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Film Reviews

Spiritual Cinema

by Movie Therapist Brian Mills

Faraway, So Close

Directed by: Wim Wenders

Starring: Otto Sandler, Bruno Ganz, Nastassja Kinski

When Wim Wenders

came to make the sequel to “Wings of Desire”, he realised that he couldn’t approach it in the same way – things had to change. In ‘Wings’ an angel falls in love with a human, but in ‘Faraway’ an angel wants to join the human world to experience what it would be like to be human, but discovers that humanity is cruel.

Both fi lms start in the

same way with an angel standing on the statue of the Angel of Victory overlooking post-war Berlin. As with all sequels it is hard to view the fi lm without comparing it to its original. Besides the addition of Nastassja Kinski, Willem Dafoe, Horst Buchholz, and Lou Reed as himself, the fi lm is much darker than ‘Wings’, the angels are less happy.

Berlin is crime-ridden, the

buildings are crumbling, and the protagonist, angel Cassiel, played by Otto Sandler, is about to fall to Earth and be reborn as a harmless man named Karl Engel who gets involved in a weapons racket which he can’t handle. His angelic friend Daniel, Bruno Ganz, has married the trapeze artist whom he travelled to Earth to love in ‘Wings’ and they now have a daughter, and of course again we have Peter Falk still appearing to interject a philosophical comment over a steaming cup of coffee, while Willem Dafoe acts as Engel’s

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of colour for the real world sequences contrasting with the monochrome scenes when angels appear are beautifully conceived. All in all this is a fi lm that deserves a wider audience, which has not been helped by the fi lm being totally rejected in Germany and panned by their fi lm critics when it was fi rst screened. My only criticism is that at over two and a half hours running time, the fi lm is a tad too long.

Film Reviewer: Brian Mills.

If you would like to be informed of other inspiring fi lms that are available on DVD or to be released at cinemas, you can subscribe to his mothly newsletter TRAILERS, which contains his latest fi lm reviews and news of special screenings of fi lms that you would not normally see at your local multiplex. Brian is an authority on

fi lm with a special interest in promoting Spiritual Cinema. He is a fi lmmaker, author, angel therapist, and one of the few movie therapists in the UK. Brian is available for private consultations for angel

bete noire as Emil Flesti. “Faraway, So Close” is a fi tting follow-up

to “Wings of Desire” and although it never quite reaches its same heights it does get pretty close. There are some wonderful metaphysical one-liners and the acting and photography are excellent. The use

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readings with an introductory offer of 60 minutes readings for only £30 to Paradigm Shift readers. Brian’s book “101 Forgotten Films” is now

available at Borders and Waterstones and all good book stores. brianjohn.mills@btinternet.com 020 8783 1315

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