City of Angels movie review & film summary (1998)
Seth is deeply moved that he is visible to Maggie. He has wondered for a while (which in his case could be millions of years) what it would be like to have a physical body. "Do you ever wonder what that would be like--touching?" he asks another angel. Maggie has a patient named Nathaniel Messinger (Dennis Franz) who is due for a heart operation, and as she watches him sleeping she tips her hand: "No dying, now, Mr. Messinger--not until you give me Seth's phone number." She knows Seth is special: "Those eyes. The way he looked right down into me." Soon she has him over for dinner, and he slices his finger but does not bleed. She feels betrayed, and cuts him again. Still no blood. She slaps him: "You freak! Just get out! Get out!" This is jarringly the wrong note, forced and artificial, but required by modern screenplay formulas that specify that the loving couple must fight and break up so that later they can get back together.
There are revelations in the story, involving Mr. Messinger and others, that I will leave you to discover. There's also a surprise development toward the end that the movie sets up so mechanically that it comes as an anticlimax. It's not a perfect movie, and there are times when Cage seems more soppy and dewy-eyed than necessary. But it has a heart, and Meg Ryan convincingly plays a woman who has met the perfect soul mate.
The movie is based on "Wings of Desire," the great 1988 film by Wim Wenders. But it's not really a remake. It's more of a formula story that benefits from some of Wenders' imagery (solitary angels standing in high places, solemnly regarding humanity) and his central story idea (in his film, an angel played by Bruno Ganz falls in love with a trapeze artist and chooses to become human, with the guidance of a former angel played by Peter Falk).
The Wenders film is more about spirituality. The decision to fall to earth comes toward the end. In "City of Angels" the angel's decision to fall is only the necessary theological prelude to the big scene in front of the fireplace ("Do you feel that? And that?"). To compare the two films is really beside the point, since "Wings of Desire" exists on its own level as a visionary and original film, and "City of Angels" exists squarely in the pop mainstream. Using Dwight Macdonald's invaluable system of cultural classification, Paradise Lost would be highcult, "Wings of Desire'" would be midcult, and "City of Angels" would be masscult.
