Berlin Babylon

To many eyes, Berlin was the saddest city in 20th-century Europe, divided and lost, and as city symphonies go, Siegert's is pragmatic and optimistic.

Babylon is about architecture as a balm, and this is a particularly good time for such a film.

This film would be an excellent companion piece to Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire," which deals with angels looking down on this scarred city. Berlin Babylon isn't nearly as lush, but in its own curious way, it's every bit as spiritual.

Moves at a leisurely pace, and it cries out for a narrator or even just an organizing principle.

Unfortunately the film never establishes either a perspective of its own or a coherent geography of the city, so the politicians pontificating at ceremonies and architects commiserating at building sites become deadly dull long before the the film exhausts its 88 minutes.

The film's deep, precise colors, which look like they belong in a Peter Greenaway movie, are Berlin Babylon's first major surprise. The second is how watchable it is, given its obsessive focus on buildings.

The voices of the architects, developers, public officials and contractors here discussing the specifics of particular sites, we're hearing the voices of a conflicted nation as it considers how to handle its tumultuous past while defining itself for future generations.