Faraway, So Close! Movie

Faraway, So Close!
Rating:
Run Time: 146 min
MPAA Rating: PG13
Released: 1993
Directors: Wim Wenders
Genre/Type: Drama
Fantasy
Psychological Drama
Heaven-Can-Wait Fantasies
Producers: Ulrich Felsberg
Wim Wenders
Plot Synopsis by Mark Deming
Wim Wenders revisits his masterpiece Der Himmel Uber Berlin in this film which picks up several years after the original left off. Cassiel (Otto Sander) is an angel who watches over the lives of the people of recently reunified Berlin with Raphaella (Nastassja Kinski). Damiel (Bruno Ganz), Cassiel's former partner who opted to return to the land of the living in the first film, now lives happily as a pizza chef with the woman he loved and married, circus performer Marion (Solveig Dommartin). While angels are forbidden to directly intervene in the lives of humans, Cassiel impulsively breaks this rule when a little girl falls from the balcony of an apartment block, and he swoops down to catch her. Suddenly made flesh and blood, Cassiel has earned the enmity of Emit Flesti (Willem Dafoe), a sort of overseer of the angels on the physical plane. Emit makes it his business to make things difficult for Cassiel now that he's living among the humans, and after a period of alcoholism and imprisonment, Cassiel finds himself working for gangster Tony Baker (Horst Buchholz), who distributes weapons and pornography on the black market. However, Cassiel has a change of heart and decides to destroy Tony's stockpile in a bid to make the world a better place. Peter Falk, who played himself in Der Himmel Uber Berlin, makes a return appearance when a gallery shows the sketches that he was making in the first film; rock singer Lou Reed and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev also appear as themselves.

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The actress who portrays the singer in the "Stay (Faraway So Close)" video is Meret Becker. She is a german actress. Her stepfather, Otto Sander, is in the movie Faraway So Close! by Wim Wenders, who also directed the video for U2...
Cassiel and Raphaella, two angels, observe the busy life of reunited Berlin. Due to their divine origin they can hear the thougts of the people around them and even try console a dying man. He also observes a forger who secretly asks for fo...
ever see a guy trying to go down (gracefully) on himself
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Cast

Actors Character Born
Otto Sander Cassiel
Peter Falk Himself Sep 16, 1927 in New York City, NY
Nastassja Kinski Raphaela Jan 24, 1961 in Berlin, Germany
Heinz Rühmann Chauffeur Konrad Mar 7, 1902
Bruno Ganz Damiel Mar 22, 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland
Solveig Dommartin Marion
Rüdiger Vogler Phillip Winter
Lou Reed Himself Mar 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, NY
Willem Dafoe Emit Flesti Jul 22, 1955 in Appleton, WI
Mikhail Gorbachev Himself
Alexander Hauff Taxi driver
Nadja Engel Woman doing box on the ear
Udo Samel Security guard
Roberto Benigni Oct 27, 1952 in Misericordia, Arezzo, Italy
Ronald Nitschke Patzke
Monika Hansen Hanna/Gertrud Becker
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Back to the topReview

Review by Andrea LeVasseur
The lyrical romance Wings of Desire gets a lighter, less developed sequel in Faraway, So Closefrom director Wim Wenders. As the first film was centered on the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) becoming human to be with his love, circus performer Marion(Solveig Dommartin), this story revolves around the less intriguing story of Cassiel (Otto Sander), who questions his angel. The pain of observing humanity without interfering is explored as Cassielcrosses over in an attempt to right some of the wrongs he has witnessed. Wenders works in both color and black-and-white to switch between the angelic and mortal worlds, and he has the newly unified Berlin to wander around in. However, the story wanders around a bit too much when Emit Flesti (Willem Dafoe) arrives to make all sorts of trouble for the newly mortalCassiel. The involvement with gangsters and weapons dealers leads the story into several different directions, making for an overabundance of subplots. Random characters get the tale off track, especially the old chauffer, played by Heinz Ruhmann. Though overlong and meandering, Faraway, So Close offers some worthy spontaneous philosophical moments.
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