The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

318 The experience of space and timetale.' His search to reconstruct and tell this tale of salvation andprotection is a subtle sub-plot throughout the film that assumes itsimportance only at the very end.But there is a second site where a fragile sense of identity prevails.The circus, a spectacle held together within the enclosed space of atent, offers a venue of special interaction within which some kind ofhuman relating can go on. It is within this space that the trapezeartist, Marion, acquires some sense of herself, a possibility of achievingand belonging. But the news that the circus is out of money and hasto close shows immediately how ephemeral and contingent thatidentity is. The short-term contract prevails here too. Yet Marion,while plainly distressed at this news, insists she has a story, and thatshe is going to go on creating one, though not in the circus. She evenimagines going into a photo-automat and emerging with a newidentity (the power of the photo image, once more), taking up a jobas waitress or whatever. Her own history, we are reminded as one ofthe angels watches her in her caravan, can in any case be collapsed(like that of Deckard) into family photographs pinned to the wall, sowhy not build a new history with the aid of photographs? !hesefantasies are suffused, however, with a powerful aura of deslre tobecome a whole rather than a fragmented and alienated person. Shelongs to be complete, but recognizes that this can come to be onlythrough a relation with another. After the tent is down and thecircus is gone, she stands alone on the empty site, feeling herself aperson without roots, without history, or without country. Yet thatvery emptiness seems to hold out the possibility of some radicaltransformation. 'I can become the world,' she says, as she watches ajet airliner cruise across the sky.One of the angels, Damiel, already chafing at his powerlessness toresonate with the here and now, is attracted by Marion's energy andbeauty, particularly in the performance of her trapeze act. r:e becomescaught up in her inner longings to become rather than Just tobe. For the first time he gets a glimpse of what the world would looklike in colour, and he is increasingly drawn to the idea of enteringthe flow of human time, leaving behind the time of the spirit and ofeternity. Two catalytic moments trigger his decision. She dreams ofhim as the resplendent 'other,' and he sees himself reflected in herdream. Invisible still, he follows Marion into a night club and, as shedances dreamily by herself, he touches her thoughts. She respondswith a sense of rapturous well-being, as if, she says, a hand is softlytightening within her body. The second catalytic moment is withPeter Falk who, it later transpires, is an angel come to ground sometime ago. He senses the presence of the invisible Damiel as he takes aTime and space in the postmodern cinema 319cup of coffee at a street stall. 'I can't see you, but I know you'rethere,' he says to a surprised Damiel, and then goes on to speak withwarmth and humour of how good it is to live in the flow of humantime, to feel material events, and take tangible account of the wholerange of human sensations.Damiel's decision to come inside is taken in the no man's landbetween two lines of the Berlin Wall, patrolled by soldiers. Fortunately,his fellow angel has the power to place him on the westernside. There Damiel wakes up to a world of rich and vibrant colours.He has to navigate the city in real physical terms, and in so doingexperiences the exhilaration that comes with creating a spatial story(in the manner of de Certeau) simply by traversing the city, whichthen no longer seems as fragmented but which assumes a morecoherent structure. This human sense of space and motion contrastswith that of angels, earlier depicted as a hyper-space of speedingflashes, each image like a cubist painting, suggesting a totally differentmode of spatial experience. Damiel shifts from one mode to theother as he enters the flow of time. But he needs money, now, tosurvive. He borrows enough from a passer-by to buy a cup of coffeeand trades in a piece of ancient armour (which we subsequently learnis the initial endowment of all angels who come to earth) andemerges from the shop with a colourful set of clothes and a watchwhich he inspects with the greatest interest. He comes across the setwhere Peter Falk is filming, and here experiences a major checkbecause the guard will not let him enter. Cursing the guard, he has toshout to Falk through a chain link fence. Falk, who guesses immediatelywho he is, asks him, 'How long?' Damiel replies, 'Minutes,hours, days, weeks, . .. TIME!' to which Falk immediately responds,with kind and gentle humour, 'Here, let me give you some dollars!'Damiel's entry into this human world is now firmly located withinthe co-ordinates of social space, social time, and the social power ofmoney.The coming together of Damiel and Marion is clearly meant as theclimactic point of the film. The two circle each other in the samenight-club she had been in before, watched tiredly by Damiel'searlier angel companion, before coming together in the bar close by.There they meet in an almost ritualistic way, she ready and determinedto make her history, to supersede being with becoming, hedetermined to learn the meaning of the flow of human experience inspace and time. In the lengthy monologue that follows, she insists onthe seriousness of their common project even though the timesthemselves may not be serious. She insists on doing away withcoincidence and contingency. The temporary contracts are over. She