Per Netflix’s 4-star recommendation, I sat down and spent a couple of hours with the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire. Oh, Netflix, you rarely disappoint me so.

Three things that I love: long, slow, absurdist movies. In that context, Netflix had the best intentions in recommending this tape to me as it fits all three criteria to a T. Unfortunately, the film in question was more an exercise in what not to do in any one of those categories. Though most films are tasteful enough not to mix everything together and completely turn potential audiences away, the last film I saw that pulled it off was Tarkovsky’s  beautiful 1986 farewell film The Sacrifice, though the closest practical comparison to Desire would probably be Roy Andersson’s delightful musing on purgatory Songs From the Second Floor (2000).

I’m proud to say there’s only a single movie I’ve ever walked out on, and I take personal issue with so-called critics who rate a movie based on 20-minutes of watching before they turn it off. With this tape though, I was quite tempted to throw in the towel myself early on. The first half hour or so of the movie reminded me so much of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” video that I almost paused the show to watch it; at least then I’d be seeing something happening.

I could tell right away that this tape was pretentious as almost anything I’ve seen. Needlessly black-and-white, strange angles, absurdist commentary. Nothing that really felt like it was elevating the story or setting. Oh, and here are some angels. Let’s put them in the most dramatic positions we possible can. Here they are sunning their wings atop a statue. Here they are sitting next to a grieving man on a train. Here they are…in a library? They stand behind you and listen to your thoughts and only children can see them. Obviously.

This is a good time to admit that I get irreparably distracted anytime I imagine an artist like a film director thinking to themselves how clever they are. “Here, let’s have a pair of angels talking to themselves in a convertible in a car showroom. Isn’t that clever?” This is a very thin line to tread for surrealists, as trying too hard even once can cause you to fall instantly from grace. Though filmmakers like Jean Cocteau sometimes wobble, Wenders fell within the first 10 minutes.

For just a two-hour movie, I found this incredibly difficult to watch. When the film starts to tastelessly introduce the color sequences it even sank down to the lowest rating I could give, only to be redeemed midway through by Peter Falk being very much himself. This bit of realism in an otherwise stupidly absurd movie grounded, or perhaps elevated, the entire picture around it. Angels spying on girls in their dressing rooms and pining to wiggle their toes was completely eclipsed by Falk’s ironically human performance. When seeing somebody behaving mostly normal in an otherwise surrealist film is the most interesting bit, you’re doing something wrong.

Though in the end the film actually did veer into interesting territory, I was further turned off to hear that it was followed by the pretentiously-named 1993 sequel, Faraway, So Close! And thanks for that, because here I was running short on tapes not to watch. Though it is actually supposed to be a better film story-wise, the fact that the original long-winded and meandering movie couldn’t even reach any kind of conclusion was the last straw for me. “To be continued,” will always be the coward’s way out.

3/10