ABSTRACT
Wim Wender's film In weiter Feme, so nah!, which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes in 1 993, opens with a quotation from Matthew's Gospel : ' if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness' (6 :22). The film nar rates the story of one angel's experience, Cassiel 's . So concerned is he with humankind that he asks to become human and his wish is granted. Separated from his angelic state and angelic company he experiences the nature of being human. He sinks into drink and despair. He prays to his angelic friend Raphaela: 'We humans are confined by what is visible, Raphaela! Only what we can see matters . It is all we believe in. Invisible things don't count. Only the things we touch truly exist for us.' The film offers a beautiful and imaginative critique of materialism along the lines of Walter Benjamin's belief that 'Materiality - but here soulless materiality ' is the home of the satanic . I Benjamin calls for a reassessment of allegory as a form of cultural critique countering that materiality which is 'emancipation from what is sacred' . 2 Wim Wender suggests something similar: we have to learn to see things otherwise.
