108. Feel &...

Lyrics

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a language
I don't understand

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
'Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
I don't wanna die
But I ain't keen on living either
Before I fall in love
I'm preparing to leave her

Scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself coming

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
'Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
And I need to feel
Real love and the love ever after
I cannot get enough

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
I got too much love
Running through my veins
To go to waste

I just wanna feel
Real love and the love ever after
There's a hole in my soul
You can see it in my face
It's a real big place

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand

Before I linked Robbie Williams' Angels to Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. Feel could just as easily be linked to it. In the context of that movie, these two songs compliment each other perfectly. One coud argue that Angels is about how the humans are affected by the angels' presence, while Feel, is about how the angels feel about the the humans and their own place in the universe. Luckily Wim Wenders has made a sequel to Wings of Desire. The connections between these two songs and Wenders' work are probably coincidental, but I'd be curious to know if Williams is a fan of Wenders.

The Movie: Faraway, So Close (In weiter Ferne, so nah!) (Wim Wenders, 1993)

Faraway, So Close is a mess, but I am very happy it exists. Directors should more often be given this kind of freedom to play with ideas, genres and styles. Not everything coheres, but this is clearly a personal movie by a director who had a lot to say, and wanted to say it in an original, and playful way. If nothing else Wenders should be lauded for getting Bruno Ganz, Nastassja Kinski, Willem Defoe, Peter Falk, Mikhail Gorbachev (!) and Lou Reed all in the same movie. He does waste Kinski a bit, and Reed a lot more than a bit. Kinski plays angel Raphaela, but doesn't get to philosophize much. She mostly has to angelically console Cassiel (Otto Sander) who decides to become human like his friend Damiel (Ganz) did in Wings of Desire. Reed gets to play himself and sing a song seemingly consisting only of the lyrics 'Why can't I be good/Why can't I act like a man/Why can't I act like other men can'. After that he pretty much dissapears.

Wenders has more on his mind than merely what it means to be human. Gorbachev's cameo is a stunt, but it is not here without reason. As he quotes a Russian philosopher we hear Gorbachev thinking about war, peace and morality. It's clear that we should consider these ideas in the context of the fall of the Soviet-Union, and the unification of Germany. This could partly serve as a justification for the sequel, Wings of Desire was made in 1987, and took place in a divided Berlin. Faraway, So Close of course takes place in 1993 when there was no more East and West Berlin, just Berlin, the capital of the 'new' Germany. This is constantly emphasized by Wenders, who wants to see/show how the unification of Berlin has affected its citizens. As such this is a film much more concerned with politics (and political philosophy), history and national culture than with existential philosophy, which is probably why I actually liked this a bit more than Wings of Desire.