My husband’s favorite movie is Wings of Desire. Upon hearing I hadn’t seen it, he was looking forward to sharing it with me. It is a beautiful German movie about an angel who falls in love with a woman who is human. The angel longs to be able to touch her and talk to her, but as an angel, all he can do is watch her – like a stalker, but this is romantic, because he’s an angel. If you’ve never seen Wings of Desire and this sounds familiar, well guess what, it was familiar for me too, much to my husband’s chagrin. When that super sweet movie ended – and let me tell you, it really was very sweet and beautiful; I mean, baby Nick Cave is singing in it! – anyway, when it ended, I crashed that sweetness to the ground with, “Oh my god you have got to watch City of Angels, because they straight up did this with Nicolas Cage.”
He pretty much gave an exasperated, “Yeah, I haven’t seen it, but I know they made a bastardized version of it.”
“Oh my god, we have to watch it. You need to compare it!”
“Please don’t make me.”
“We have to, for science!”
And so, we watched City of Angels to compare it with Wings of Desire and sweet jebus I am so glad we did! I had already seen it when it came out and remember enjoying it. I remember that I liked the score by Gabriel Yared and most of the soundtrack. Three main things had stuck with me: (1), it was an overall sweet movie; (2), Andre Braugher has one of the best smiles; and (3), who rides a bike with their goddamn eyes closed on a road? But comparing it to the hub’s favorite movie was magical. Nicolas Cage’s take of playing the angel when being around his human love interest was that of a love-sick puppy. It was only when held up next to the original movie that it stood out so much. Every shot, he was just staring at her, sad-eyed and love-sick, yearning to touch her and to be touched by her, in every. Single. Scene.
My husband rejected this movie being an adaptation of Wings of Desire, and I said he was just sad Nicolas Cage wasn’t following him around.
And that’s when I realized – he needs the angel of Nicolas Cage to follow him around.
The following day, I proceeded to print off as many pictures as I could find of Cage looking directly at the camera. Since I got off work earlier than he did, I knew I had time, but still had to be quick; I had quite a few pictures. I then got to work hiding the pictures throughout the house, specifically where my husband would encounter them during his normal routine: the back of his medicine cabinet, bottom of his top dresser drawer, inside of kitchen cabinet doors, under his bed pillow, inside the book he was reading, inside his laptop, etc.
This was 8 years ago, and some of those pictures are still hanging up. I think this was mostly due to a preemptive white-flag, because he already knew that I would absolutely keep putting them up. Just because you give up on the Nicolas Cage angel, doesn’t mean Nicolas Cage angel gives up on you. He’s always watching. Always.
The result of this has been an unexpected appreciation for Nicolas Cage and the roles he chooses. It’s enjoyable that he has a self-awareness of his eccentricities, and it makes watching some performances a joy. I say some, because not all characters are written well and what’re you gonna do. Recently he said, ”…I like the goth element. I am a goth.” Firstly, putting ’a’ in front goth makes him an Elder goth and I love it. Secondly, I’m in some goth groups and follow some pages and they all erupted with acceptance and joy and lots of, ”One of us!” And let me tell you, goths are very accepting, but if goths didn’t want someone affiliated as one, there would be a lot of telling the person to ”hit the bricks.”
Wings of Desire continues to be my husband’s favorite movie, and for good reason. It’s thoughtful, cinematically purposeful, well written, has a good cast with great use of diegetic music, and it’s a love story. I don’t know if the love story part has any bearing on his love for the film, but I tend to be a pushover for such things. If you have not had the opportunity to watch Wings of Desire, I highly recommend it. …and then you can follow it up with City of Angels and stalk your partner like I did mine! (Pictures below.)
