Enlightenment in the Cinema

I'm doing the readings (slowly), don't get me wrong. But, on rare occasions, I've come across the profound in other mediums. Rarest of all, I saw this in a movie (not that movies can't have significant insight, it just seems to have degenerated in recent years). Mind you, it always seems more profound when spoken in another language -- German, in this case. The film that I refer to is "Wings of Desire" from 1987, starring Bruno Ganz and directed by Wim Wenders. If those names mean anything to you.

This is the movie that was ripped off and turned into "City of Angels" in 1997. As with most of these cases, the original was better but American audiences below a certain class are too lazy to read subtitles. This is our moviegoing public, for the most part. Doesn't that make you proud? Well, grousing about the illiteracy of the Great Unwashed aside, I much prefer "Wings of Desire."

The gist of the film is this: angels walk among us, listening to our thoughts for a chance to glimpse the sublime in our everyday lives. Damiel the angel falls for a trapeze girl and is forced to either remain hidden from her or fall from Grace. The film uses black and white photography versus color to show the angels' perspective (b&w) and the human point of view (color). It's all very metaphorical and cinematic. But, for the purposes of this blog, I just wanted to transcribe some lines from the movie.

Damiel, talking to another angel after they've summarized their observations for the day:

It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above, I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and tie me to earth. I'd like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say "now!" "Now and now" and no longer "forever" and "for eternity."

What I hope to grasp in the course of this study on spirituality is to more fully grasp the moment. In that, I use the two meanings of "moment" -- both a unit of time that is by nature immeasurable yet always fleeting, and the momentousness as importance, as something greater than ourselves. I know not if I need a god to achieve this. Perhaps a shared consciousness, purpose, or goal of one community united by belief. That would count as much greater than the individual, regardless of the delusions of conceit.

One more quote, this one from an old man who was a teacher and now just goes to the library to read and think:

But no one has so far succeeded in singing an epic of peace. What is wrong with peace, that its inspiration doesn't endure and that it is almost untellable?

This brings me around to my first religion under scrutiny: Hinduism. Yes, the religion that is so well represented by Gandhi, who in turn inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to campaign with such devotion for civil rights. These are two giants that represent great goals for peace. But what stands foremost in my mind is the suffering they endured in their cause, and the fact that they were both assassinated. One can also draw a parallel to the gleeful torture and execution of Catholic martyrs, which I will also study in due course. How cruel is this world that they cannot stand a man of peace to live?