Wings of Desire and the Joys of Finitude

Kupfer, Joseph

doi:10.5840/filmphil202410330

Film and Philosophy

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published on October 10, 2024

Joseph Kupfer

https://doi.org/10.5840/filmphil202410330

Wings of Desire and the Joys of Finitude

The film Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) begins to answer the startling question, “How could being human be superior to enjoying an angelic existence?” The film’s elevation of ordinary humanity is so persuasive that a few angels forego eternity, “take the plunge,” and become mortals. The first layer of human attraction is found in the uncomplicated pleasures of physical embodiment. To the enjoyment of bodily sensations such as warming our hands on a chilly day, the film adds the ecstasy of romantic love, including the social intimacy of conjugal union. The third layer of human life is the stratum of meaning that purposeful action contributes. Finitude demands that we must decide how to spend our limited time as not all options can or will remain open. This animates life with the hope of positive outcomes and the trepidation of mishap. The meaning that accrues to experience, then, depends on the temporality and limitations inherent within life and definitive of mortal existence as such.

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