Airy 'City of Angels' strands viewers solidly high and dry

By Yudha Kartohadiprodjo

JAKARTA (JP): To many of us, a near-death experience fills us with an intense fascination about the mystery of life after death. Our age-old questions about what the world is beyond life, about what happens in the world where the soul is no longer contained by substance have, inevitably, remained unanswered.

City of Angels superficially attempts to answer these questions from the opposite direction, telling about the soul of an angel who experiences a "near-life experience". Ever since, he has lusted for the feel of that which many of us mortals take for granted.

Adapted from the poetic 1988 German independent film Wings of Desire, the movie misinterprets its own substance and consequently loses the very soul it supposedly comprises.

Seth (Nicholas Cage) is an angel who has been roaming around the world since the beginning of time, vested with the duty to observe and take notes on humans. He also accompanies souls leaving this world. Invisible to mere human eyes, unable to feel and taste, Seth compares notes and exchanges thoughts with his fellow angel, Casiel (Andre Brauger).

Together with the other angels of Los Angeles County, they congregate on the beach at every sunset and sunrise to hear the divine tunes from heaven. Their favorite hangout, however, is the city library, where people's minds seems to amaze them the most.

Seth meets with his destiny in the cardio surgery room, in the form of Maggie Rice (Meg Ryan), a heart surgeon who is desperately trying to save a patient. As she holds and massages the heart of the dying patient in her hands, Maggie stares straight into Seth's eyes.

Maggie's reaction after the unexpected loss touches Seth's heart. From this point on, the movie is a story of love at first sight, supposedly obstructed by Seth's inability as an angel to perceive human senses and feelings. Yet it begins an inconsistent pattern that persists through the rest of the film.

Despite being unable to share physical human senses, Seth possesses emotion and curiosity. His desire to leave his heavenly duty arises in his dialog with Cassiel: "What good a pair of wings be, if you cannot feel the wind on your face".

Not until Seth meets Nathaniel Messinger (Dennis Franza from the TV serial NYPD Blues), an angel turned into a cholesterol- laden and hedonistic patient of Maggie, does he realize he can relinquish his angelic duties of his own will.

Messinger proudly shows Seth his very own reason to leave the heavenly duty with wallet full of pictures of his beloved family, and an American Express card.

This movie may contain one of the better performances of Ryan. She conducted thorough research for the part, even attending a few open-heart surgeries. The imperfection, rationality and impulsive bursts of emotion in Maggie only makes her character appear even more human. A word of warning, though: if you are about to have heart surgery, you would probably not want to know what is on your surgeon's mind as he or she operates on you.

Ryan consistently maintains her part as a surgeon who truly believes in the empirical explanation of science, but who starts to question the existence of life.

But, combined with the nitty-gritty attributes of a typical Hollywood love story, this is as deep as the movie goes.

Seth's role fails to match the apprehension posed by Maggie. Continuously amazed by the human senses he lacks, the character appears to disregard his role as an angel and dives into mortal emotions even before he takes his own plunge. Seth's turmoil and negotiations with himself stop just short of his cheesy yet catchy dialog.

Cage's eyes, the eyes that supposedly unite him with Maggie, are nothing more than a reflection of a sad individual, lacking the indifference and composure supposedly possessed by the observer.

Such inconsistency is fatal when Seth has finally turned into a human because there is no contrast with who he was as an angel.

Beautiful aerial shots of the skyline of Los Angelas sprinkled throughout the movie -- supposedly evoking Seth's role as an angel -- unfortunately fails to depict the contrast of how he perceives life as he turns into a human. If the intention of the director is to provide aerial shots of angels literally shooting the breeze on top of unusual places, then he succeeded in the first five minutes of the movie.

A touching conversation between Seth and Messinger on top of a highrise is the only aerial scene serving its purpose, even though it may remind some viewers of Lewis Hines' photographs of construction workers on top of New York's Empire State Building.

Unlike the lyrical Wings of Desire, viewers may only find a romanticized story of a lovesick couple in City of Angels. It is not a deadly sin but, like the angels, you may feel that you have been left hanging in midair after the inflated buildup.