Re: Stay (faraway, so close!) and City Of Angels

Haley Miller ([email protected])
Tue, 21 Jul 1998 14:22:07 -0400

>The similarities between the two movies are more than coincidental as
>I've observed in the Stay video.
> Did the director or producer or writer of City Of Angels ever credit Win
>Wenders as the inspiration or did he ever mention Faraway So Close as
>his influence?

City of Angels is basically a remake of Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987 -
the predecessor to Faraway So Close(1993)). Another interesting thing is
that in BOTH City and Faraway, there is a U2 song playing during the diner
scene (The Wanderer in Faraway and IGWSHA in City)

To truly understand the Stay vid, rent Faraway So Close and Wings
Not only are both great examples of New German Cinema, they're darn good
films. For the almost-cheap American-ized version, see "City of Angles"
(please don't flame me, wirelings, I'm American and I LOVED "City" but
Hollywood scraped some the art and beauty and most of the "deep" meaning out
of the original movies to make a mainstream hit)

I absolutely LOVE stay, wings, city and faraway. they are wonderful works of
art and should be released as a boxed set, complete with soundtracks and a
companion book.

but here's a quick run down of the video and it's parallels with the
Wenders' Faraway, So Close (the title incidentally is a comment on the
angels proximity to humans; humans think angels are distant, but the are so
near them & consequently, God's proximity to humans AND angels(trinity
much).):

The garage band is, to my knowledge, just a
random band. the Angles in Wender's films are angels of comfort,
assistance, reassurance, help whatever, (unlike "City"'s angels who are
portrayed largely as angels of death). The U2 angels visit the band to
assist them.
Bono whispers the lyrics into the woman's ear and coaches her emoting
(guiding her swaying and helping her gestures), Edge tunes the guy's guitar,
Larry plays the snare downbeat (which pretty much makes the song....I have a
version of stay w/o that to prove it) and Adam watches the bass player with
detached approval. (if you think about it, the vid looks like a pretty
good portrait of their respective personalities) The angels are
invisible, the garage band is oblivious to their presence, and indicated
by the b&w. The "chick with wings" is Raphela (played by Nastassja Kinski),
a character in the movie. In one scene, she is
comforting a dying heroine addict (i think) and Cassiel (the main
character) is watching her. Instead of Cassiel they put Bono there for
the vid. Cassiel hangs around on top of the Angel statue (in "City" they
sit on a billboard....ahhh America), which is why the band is standing
there and jumping off of it. They're angels, they can fly. (well, Adam
doesn't jump, he just looks down after Larry jumps like, "You boys are
welcome to leap 200 feet to the ground, I'll stay right here, thank you
very much")

hows that for an explanation(albeit a recycled one)?

for more information on Faraway, So Close check out this site -
http://www.webstation.com/mahler/fsc.html

Peace, Love and Vegetables
Haley
************************************************
 http://www.smith.edu/~hmiller/vieu.html
"I went mad for a while," said Ford Prefect, "did me no end of
good....and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept
myself amused all that time by jumping in and out of gin and tonic."'
-douglas adams, "life, the universe and everything"

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