It’s 1980 Berlin, the Berlinest of years. A hushed picture in black and white. This Berlin’s dreariness is to be seen more on its inhabitants’ faces than in the city’s crumbling grandeur. Tending this wilderness of the spirit is a pair of mismatched shepherds: fatherly Bruno Ganz and the unlikely figure of Peter Falk – comic antidote and every man’s everyman. These are the bare bones of Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, a film that depicts two angels traveling around Berlin, ministering to its desperate population. This ministry, it soon becomes clear, is one of consolation. Its blessings are served in touches and whispers. In this novel recasting of an angel’s workweek, Ganz’s angel, nursing the downcast of Berlin, begins to feel within himself some of their un-angelic cravings. He wants to love. He wants his wings clipped to make way for unbridled human experience. He wants hamburgers (I repeat myself?).

Karl Rahner helps us take angels seriously, even if they are admittedly hard to pin down.