We Saw "Wings of Desire" and it was...
Dec. 11th, 2006 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexum, hard to summarize. That's not terribly surprising, really. ART is known for avant-garde productions - and yes, I know that term is abused almost beyond meaning, but really when it was invented it was meant to apply to things like this. Wings of Desire is a Wim Wenders film, never a subject for straightforward reading. Find me a Wenders film with fewer than three layers of possible interpretation and I'll say you're missing something. So this is me trying to tell you about a play you really ought to go see for yourself.
The lead woman really worked. They cast an actual aerialist and she's great. The silks moves aren't Cirque-level breathtaking, but it's very good. She is as much at home in the air as she is on the ground and that makes her character so much better. There are a number of levels of allegory in this story about wings and flying and she really flies.
The actors work. There's a level of professionalism that you get from people whose craft is this kind of production. I miss working real professional theater. This play calls for people to work in several media (speech, operatic singing, punk rock music, physical motion) and there wasn't a bad performer in the lot. Likewise, I thought the staging, lighting, and direction were all top-notch. Considered purely as a dramatic production I was pretty happy.
The music mostly worked. Live music is always dicey and making the music part of the play, rather than simply its score, is doubly so. I think they pulled it off.
One of the things I though almost worked was the attempt to re-set the play in the modern here-and-now. There are copious references to Boston, Cambridge, and local environs. The play's newscaster uses a well-known NPR radio personality, show title, and reads the current day's headlines and weather. There was a palpable gasp from the audience when she read out that Pinochet had died - clearly many in the audience were like me in not having heard that bit of news before. Remember that bit about avante-garde? When you get your news headlines from a character in a play you're watching - THAT's avante-garde.
On the other hand, the original title of the film is Der Himmel über Berlin. The city of Berlin is, in my opinion, integral to the original film. And there are bits in the play that make more sense if you think of it being set in Berlin as the Wall is about to come down.
Casting Homer as a blind old lady with a music box almost worked. There were enough references in the play that I should've picked up on who she was but I didn't get it until I read the playbill at which point I went "Oh! Right!" *slapforehead*
The play aggressively smashes the fourth wall not just by moving some of the action out into the audience but by actors directly drawing the audience in and referring to themselves as actors in a meta-commentary. I am told that Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the co-stagers of this production are known for doing that, and certainly European theater has been much more aggressive in general about removing that wall than American theater has been. Our theater is more like television than theirs, for better or worse.
On the other hand, one of the joys I get from Wenders is being able to sit back and soak in his rich imagery and complex meanings. When I'm tossed out of that level of reverie I have to re-think my relationship to the production. I grant that's part of the point here but I'm not sure I enjoyed it.
I didn't like the general level of chaos at certain points in the production. I realize they're trying to simulate a three-ring circus and so your attention is always being teased by lots going on. But I found it distracting and beside the point.
And finally - can anyone explain the bit with the multi-colored plastic chairs and the sand to me?
I guess it wouldn't be an ART production without me going WTF at least once. But still.
The lead woman really worked. They cast an actual aerialist and she's great. The silks moves aren't Cirque-level breathtaking, but it's very good. She is as much at home in the air as she is on the ground and that makes her character so much better. There are a number of levels of allegory in this story about wings and flying and she really flies.
The actors work. There's a level of professionalism that you get from people whose craft is this kind of production. I miss working real professional theater. This play calls for people to work in several media (speech, operatic singing, punk rock music, physical motion) and there wasn't a bad performer in the lot. Likewise, I thought the staging, lighting, and direction were all top-notch. Considered purely as a dramatic production I was pretty happy.
The music mostly worked. Live music is always dicey and making the music part of the play, rather than simply its score, is doubly so. I think they pulled it off.
One of the things I though almost worked was the attempt to re-set the play in the modern here-and-now. There are copious references to Boston, Cambridge, and local environs. The play's newscaster uses a well-known NPR radio personality, show title, and reads the current day's headlines and weather. There was a palpable gasp from the audience when she read out that Pinochet had died - clearly many in the audience were like me in not having heard that bit of news before. Remember that bit about avante-garde? When you get your news headlines from a character in a play you're watching - THAT's avante-garde.
On the other hand, the original title of the film is Der Himmel über Berlin. The city of Berlin is, in my opinion, integral to the original film. And there are bits in the play that make more sense if you think of it being set in Berlin as the Wall is about to come down.
Casting Homer as a blind old lady with a music box almost worked. There were enough references in the play that I should've picked up on who she was but I didn't get it until I read the playbill at which point I went "Oh! Right!" *slapforehead*
The play aggressively smashes the fourth wall not just by moving some of the action out into the audience but by actors directly drawing the audience in and referring to themselves as actors in a meta-commentary. I am told that Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the co-stagers of this production are known for doing that, and certainly European theater has been much more aggressive in general about removing that wall than American theater has been. Our theater is more like television than theirs, for better or worse.
On the other hand, one of the joys I get from Wenders is being able to sit back and soak in his rich imagery and complex meanings. When I'm tossed out of that level of reverie I have to re-think my relationship to the production. I grant that's part of the point here but I'm not sure I enjoyed it.
I didn't like the general level of chaos at certain points in the production. I realize they're trying to simulate a three-ring circus and so your attention is always being teased by lots going on. But I found it distracting and beside the point.
And finally - can anyone explain the bit with the multi-colored plastic chairs and the sand to me?
I guess it wouldn't be an ART production without me going WTF at least once. But still.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 04:40 pm (UTC)I liked the aerialist as an aerialist but not as an actor.
Can't explain the chairs and sand either.
Liked the concept of the music, but not the music itself. Liked the singer, the female one, but found most of what they did musically compositionally incredibly boring and too dissonant.
But by and large I also liked it.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 04:51 pm (UTC)I understand and see the point of your comments. I'll be interested to read your review if you decide to write it up.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 05:34 pm (UTC)Time moved very differently in the film version. There was the way that the angels perceived time and then there was the the way time moved in the mortal world. They did a poor job of referring to this though. Many many more referenced as to the difference between 'angel time' and 'human time' were made in the film version. Did you notice that the sand stopped falling from the sky shortly after Damiel fell to earth. As for the colored chairs? Piss poor way to make referance to the fact that angels perceive in black and white, and humans see full color. In the film all the angel POV stuff was black and white. After Damiel fell to earth, he had a conversation about the colors in a bit of graffiti on the Berlin Wall.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 06:28 pm (UTC)Yes and yes again. Of course. I commented to Pygment on the walk back to the car that I would have to re-watch the movie to see if I could make more sense of it.
Thank you so much!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 09:46 pm (UTC)(The bit of poetry which was recited during the long aeriel act, "Who, if I were to cry out/who would hear me amongst the angelic orders..." that is the beginning of the First Elegy.)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 09:42 pm (UTC)I am...not a purist. The setting change didn't really bother me, because I feel that the parts of the film which weren't explicitly about Berlin can be translated well into most any time/place, and that while Berlin is a useful metaphor for division, much like the division the piece posits between spirit and body, it's hardly the only one that exists. And I think there is still a lot to the film that is not about Berlin.
So.
I agree the
One of the things that frustrated me about the sand/chairs scene, actually, was its length. I never get bored watching the film, which I have done more than once, but there were a couple of moments in the play, that one most prominently, where my inner theater voice kept saying "move it along, people. More of this isn't going to get your point across."
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 06:12 pm (UTC)