Flights of memory: narrating the past in Wings of Desire

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  • September 6, 2022
Creator
  • Kaplan, Silia
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures
Abstract
  • Wings of Desire engages in a dialectic of remembering and forgetting by presenting the inner dialogues and memories of the people of Berlin in the foreground of a physical memory of destruction. The inhabitants wander the city with little attentiveness to its architecture (the Berlin wall and the ruined buildings as a record of jarred collective memory) while being absorbed in their own troubled thoughts, but Wenders reconciles this disconnect in the figure of the storyteller. The film explores the intricacies of memory through notions of storytelling, often reflecting Benjamin’s theories of memory and history. My paper extensively analyzes these concepts as they are portrayed in the postmodern metropolis of Berlin, identifying not only the problems that arise in the attempt to depict a postmodern narrative but also the ways in which Wenders is able to resolve these problems and leave his viewers with optimism and hope for the future.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Kuzniar, Alice A.
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  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • October 19, 2010

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