This film makes me feel like I am a popcorn-chomping, blockbuster addict. Not only do I not really 'get it', but I have now called it quits after making eight attempts to watch this over the course of a year and falling asleep every single time. I don't find the film boring at all- pretentious and self-consciously arty certainly, but not boring. I just find that the film's measured pace, somnambulistic progress through the streets of Berlin and snatches of conversation, music, private thoughts and dreams overlapping one another to be the perfect accompaniment to my drift toward sleep. That this style has been done to death since by arty pop-video makers doesn't help either.
From what I can gather it is a paean to Berlin and the people of Berlin as seen through the eyes of the angels who can "do no more than look, assemble, testify, preserve". There are a lot of references to children and the death of childhood- as if the people are the children and the angels are the adults watching over them. We also see a dying man recount the things he will miss just as the angels continue to ("blackened fingers from newspaper") again as if their existence is just an extension of our own lives. It's difficult to say having seen little more than a quarter of the film.
I like what I've seen of it- never much more than half an hour- and I'm intrigued to know what I'm missing. But I've cut my losses on this one. I'll try again on a summer afternoon when I'm wide awake but, for now, it scores a pretentious but beautiful 2/10.
