Communing with Cinema

Recently, I introduced my son to one of my all time favorite movies, Wings of Desire.  I still remember seeing it for the first time as a freshman at Purdue (1988) and walking out with a friend and he wanted to talk about the movie because he thought it was a good movie.  I didn't want to talk about it because I felt I had just experienced something holy and profound.

By now, I've probably seen it 5 or 6 times.  But you know the funny thing about really deep experiences?  They keep giving you something new. In the movie's penultimate scene, the two lovers finally meet in a club (with Nick Cave playing on stage in the adjoining room of course).  What follows is a speech that tries to combine the dual themes of the movie:  Love for the city (love for mankind), and Romantic Love.  What I had failed to appreciate on prior viewing was that the glass of wine offered by Damiel to Marion.  It is as if a priest were offering it in communion as a sacrament.  They hold the glass together and look into each other's eyes.  She takes a sip, he takes a sip and then the glass sits there in the background for the rest of the scene.

A sacrament is a 'sacred mystery'

Communion is fellowship or sharing something together.  

Of course Damiel has sacrificed the eternal for the temporal, but it appears to me that he is the receiver of the blessing and Marion is the giver as she takes the first sip.  Life, after all, is the sacred mystery here and the community of people is what Damiel has longed for.  His love for her is what 'freed' him...

Oh, the Nick Cave song in the background? "From Her to Eternity" of course!

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P.S. It's not just art that has this 'revisit and enrich' aspect of course.  Sometimes a math equation or a law of physics can continue to reveal their secrets to you slowly over time...