The Edge of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite)

 

Director Fatih Akin

Akin with Hanna Schygulla at Cannes

winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (Auf Der Anderen Seite)                       A                                      aka:  On the Other Side                                                                                                    Germany  Turkey  (122 mi)  2007  d: Fatih Akin

This film opens and closes on a brilliant shot, each offering its own thematic observation, beginning with a car arriving at a desolate, run down gas station, where the traveler is called by the name of “brother” several times, a sign of cultural respect, but one that is multi-sided, as the film soon reveals.  The film’s literal title is On the Other Side, which better reflects the border between life and death as well as the geographical one between countries and the different ways of life.  Fatih Akin has written another one of those Kieslowski-like Three Colors Trilogy intersecting plot scenarios told in three chapter headings involving three families with mixed German-Turkish heritage, a Turkish father and son living in Germany, a Turkish mother living in Germany but separated from her long lost daughter, and a German mother and daughter, not necessarily seen in any correct order.  At some point in the film, all are connected, but what matters most is not the interweaving mathematical construction, which is interesting enough, but the deep-seeded connections that are established, some of which are profoundly moving, becoming a story of sacrifice and forgiveness, and the possibility of reconciliation.  The film highlights the differences between the two cultures in the first two shots, which couldn’t be more opposite, providing the viewer some idea as to the vast divide that exists between characters.   Historically, as the postwar French invited the Algerians, more than two million Turks were invited into Germany to work as “guest workers,” the exact same term President Bush has used for his proposed temporary resident immigration program with Mexicans, a proposal that went nowhere except to fan the flames of racist intolerance along the border states where they are building giant iron fences to keep the immigrants out.  While these host nations offer unskilled, low wage labor, it has been accompanied by deep seeded resentment in the mother country against the “foreigners” as well as complications arising when first generation offspring are actually born citizens, yet treated with racist scorn and disregard, where the harsh reality is that it’s easier to hate someone than to love them.  Evidence Fassbinder’s earlier German classic ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974) and the recent riots outside Paris that lasted for weeks.  Angry demonstrations by what are seen as radical fringe groups in both France and Germany (and now Turkey) are the norm and cast an altogether different face than the advertised brotherly unity of the European Union.  

Winner of Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival of 2007, though the choice is not without controversy, as many have tired of an over-reliance on this revolving door style of storytelling these days, though few are as deeply compassionate as displayed here.  Tuncel Kurtiz, a prominent Turkish actor who worked with renowned Turkish director Yilmaz Güney (an unmistakable influence on Akin), is Ali Aksu, an Anthony Quinn, Zorba the Greek type character, an old Turkish man who retains his vigorous energy and charm, and his delight with the pleasures of women and drink.  When he finds a Fassbinderesque Turkish hooker in Bremen, Germany, Nursel Köse as Yeter, who may as well be the voluptuous Barbara Valentin in ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL, he is so taken by her that he makes her an offer to come live with him.  After she is visited by some glum looking Islamic radicals who could make her life miserable, she thinks the old man’s offer is a safe choice, but it has tragic consequences for both.  Ali’s son is Nejat (Baki Davrak), somewhat reminiscent of French actor Romain Duris, an introverted college German professor who lectures on Goethe and becomes the closest thing to a lead character in this film, who is initially skeptical of his father’s relationship, but he grows fond of Yeter once he discovers the sacrifice she makes sending most of her hard-earned money home to Turkey for her estranged daughter's university studies, and eventually goes searching for her missing daughter in Istanbul, realizing the importance of the connection they never had.   Nurgül Yesilçay plays the daughter Ayten, a fiercely independent radical in Turkey who has revolutionary ambitions with militant connections, which after an unfortunate incident leads to a quick escape to Hamburg, Germany, finding herself alone and penniless, where she meets a young student Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) completely at random, soon becoming love interests, despite the disapproving eye of her more conservative mother Susanne, Fassbinder icon Hanna Schygulla returning to the screen after a long absence, who truly rekindles her acting credibility here.  Ayten is arrested and confined for months before her asylum plea is denied, leading to her deportation and imprisonment in Turkey.  Lotte travels to Turkey, where she doesn’t speak the language, yet a chance encounter brings her together with Nejat, where the city of Istanbul actually becomes a prominent character, where it’s easy to get lost, as she gets caught up in the seemingly hopeless situation of freeing Ayten.  Once the principals are introduced, tragedy befalls each and every one, though in differing ways, but each loses something that may as well be the most important thing in their life. 

Influenced by Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, which was enormously popular on college campuses in the 60’s, this film is multi-layered and poignant, the second entry in an intended trilogy Liebe, Tod und Teufel (Love, Death and the Devil), with Akin's acclaimed HEAD-ON (2004) as the first installment, culminating in THE CUT (2014).  While not as explosive as HEAD ON, a radically offbeat punk love story, this quieter effort is still a daring work of probing intelligence on death and the power of redemption, where the extraordinary editing interweaves several stories together in a nonlinear narrative, using a revolving cast in a series of near-miss connections, becoming an exploration of transnational identity, which includes the difficulty of identity within exile, where the cruelty of the modern world, with its Kafkaesque absurdities, is simultaneously tearing us apart while also bringing us closer together.  Set in an expanding internationalized stage with a constantly-on-the-move camera style by Rainer Klausmann that beautifully captures with precision the finer details in each culture, which is an extraordinary expression simply by composition alone, adding authentic locations and music to a superb ensemble of actors, led by Schygulla who may surprise many with the depth of her performance, but she is given some of the best scenes in the film which occur near the end.  Her character beautifully transcends the cultural divide with her effortless style of understatement and also offers a refreshing look at what those self-absorbed kids from Fassbinder’s KATZELMACHER (1969) might have turned into forty years later, where she literally becomes the consciousness of the film.  The final shot has its own transcendent quality, which could easily be a shot from similar films such as Ozon’s TIME TO LEAVE (2005) or Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s CLIMATES (2006), yet shown here, coming on the heels of Schygulla’s personal transformation, offers profound insight, and an open-ended ambiguity.  It’s so easy to get caught up in our differences, which is at the root of KATZELMACHER, shown through simple, ordinary acts of societal prejudice and xenophobia, but what we have in common is all too often overlooked and forgotten, but not by Akin, called Fatih Fassbinder in some reviews, who skillfully navigates outside the jurisdiction of national boundaries and identities by knowing each so well and instead, despite the meandering journey, cuts a path straight to the heart of the matter, creating believable people who suffer unfathomable losses yet retain a surprising emotional resilience.  

2017 Top Ten List #9 In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts)

Director Fatih Akin (left)and actress Diane Kruger

IN THE FADE (Aus dem Nichts)          A-                       
Germany  France  (106 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Fatih Akin     

A rare film that couldn’t be more timely, especially in Germany, where the European refugee crisis has given rise to a nationalist anti-immigrant movement, specifically the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU), which has carried out a series of bombing attacks targeting immigrants living in Germany.  Akin himself is a Turkish-German immigrant, where he views himself as a potential target.  According to information discovered on a neo-Nazi website known as Nuremburg 2.0, Akin’s name appeared on a list of artists and politicians targeted by them, which provoked him to write this film, co-written by Hank Bohm, a lawyer, better known as an actor affiliated with Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  In some respects, this is a contemporary update of Fassbinder’s ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), where an older German woman and a young North African black were the targets of racist actions, literally ostracized by their respective families and friends, as well as the surrounding cultural communities, while this film also has a German woman and a Turkish immigrant husband, with the husband, along with their young son, becoming the target of a neo-Nazi bombing attack.  In the 60’s and 70’s the bombing campaigns in Germany were led by radical left extremists, the Baader-Meinhof gang, becoming the Red Army Faction (RAF), while a half century later the movement is comprised of radical right extremists in the NSU.  In an interview at Cannes with Alissa Simon, Director Fatih Akin on Returning to Cannes With Competition ... - Variety, Akin points out a recent scandal taking place in the German military where right-wing extremists created fictional personalities pretending to be Syrian refugees, actually planning bombing attacks so refugees would be labeled as terrorists.  This caused huge headlines of outrage against the refugees, where the government, in response, stopped letting refugees into the country, which was the precise goal all along.  While this paints an ugly picture of Germany, other nations are facing a similar surge of right-wing, neo-Nazi’s leading a wave of anti-immigrant hatred.  This is basically how Hitler got his start, by demonizing and then criminalizing anyone that wasn’t a member of the Aryan race.  It would be foolish to think these movements don’t have an impact, or that they don’t fabricate stories meant to instill fear and panic, as they helped elect the current President of the United States, who, thus far, has been averse to denouncing white supremists and neo-Nazi’s, as they helped get him elected.  Few other films are dealing with this issue head-on. 

While this is a fairly mainstream film with an arthouse sensibility, it received horrible reviews when it premiered at Cannes, calling it insipid, disappointing, average, predictable, by-the-numbers, or heavy-handed, with Richard Porton of Cinema Scope even calling it a con job, all undeserved, with critics really missing the boat, as many continue to have their heads in the sand over the ugly rise of fascism and the neo-Nazi movement.  And while Akin does resort to cliché’s or stereotypes, it is only because those stereotypes are becoming more prevalent in influencing public sentiments.  After WWII, who would have thought, despite a German educational campaign to eradicate the depiction of Hitler as a hero, in just 50 years there would be such a resurgence of fascism not only in Germany, but around the world.  While the film may ultimately take a fatalistic view, this is not so strange in the world of cinema, which doesn’t pretend to have answers, but instead seeks to provoke audiences out of a sense of complacency, where the status quo tends to ignore home-grown extremist groups, preferring instead to target Muslim extremist groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda, as they’re easier to blame, where an international consensus already denounces their actions.  Not so easy when it comes to your own citizens, as denouncing them is eliminating some of your own potential voters.  The problem is convincing them to take an alternative path, but many who gravitate to neo-Nazi movements have nothing left but prejudice and hatred, misguided ideas that are not easily changed, where violence is the only outlet for their deep-seeded anger.  Western societies always think education is the key, that we can eradicate racism through knowledge, but extremist groups target the disinterested and less educated among us and fill their minds with inflammatory rhetoric, giving them a false perception of power.  Akin’s film is not a political exposé, and there is no mention of al-Qaeda or ISIS, instead it is an individual journey through the personal hell of having to live with terrorists wiping out your family.  While there is a lengthy courtroom sequence that attempts to address the legal issues, which in itself is unique, as we’ve rarely seen the German legal system in action, where not only the state is prosecuting, but the victims’ wife and mother is considered a co-prosecutor, using a conversational style that can be eye-opening for the uninitiated, yet this is the tool where society holds the murderous accountable for their actions, but due to an imperfect quality of justice, the system doesn’t always work.  Nonetheless the courtroom sequences are gripping, especially the back and forth sparring between the two opposing lawyers, Denis Moschitto and Johannes Krisch.  

One of the more intriguing aspects of the film, and there are many, is the introduction of German actress Diane Kruger to a German audience, where she is largely seen as a model, not an actress, as she has never made a German-language film before.  Awarded Best Actress at Cannes, the film is primarily seen through her eyes, though this is no ordinary character study, as it doesn’t delve into her background or life history, but simply presents her response to the incendiary incident at the center of the picture, initially wracked with agony and pain, going through inconceivable personal anguish, made all the worse by the bickering and infighting between the family and in-laws, where she is blamed for poor mothering skills, allowing her child to be at work with his father and not taking care of him herself, then trying to hold it all together at the trial, unleashing a personal fury against the defendants at one point, as they refuse to even look at her, where viewers don’t ever really know her, but we certainly get an idea what she’s going through, as it’s written all over her face.  She’s a bit of a bad-ass, coming off as a biker chick, with a variety of tattoos, but we have no backstory.  The opening sequence is actually hilarious, as Nuri (Numan Acar), dressed in a white suit, is cheered like a soccer star that just scored the winning goal as he walks down the gangway of what turns out to be a prison, eventually entering an isolated room where his bride-to-be (Kruger) is all dressed in white.  The auspicious beginning is followed by a deluge of rain, as every single introductory shot takes place in a downpour, yet they seem to have a happy marriage, producing an adorable young son, who’s kind of a geek, but their lives are lost early in the film, where the rest is all about the ramifications, the various phases of grief, anger and outrage, holding out hope for justice, where it all takes place on her face, everything you need to know, culminating with a controversial flame-out at the end, though not nearly on the level of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970), yet equally as provocative.  Antonioni’s film was also trashed by the critics.  Akin is known for his brilliant use of music, and this film is no exception, though it’s more low key, downbeat, and even self-destructive as interpreted by Josh Hamme from the American band Queens of the Stone Age.  This time Akin has made a film of social conscious that rages against right-wing extremism with its own impassioned fury, showing how easily law enforcement gets sidetracked, reinforced by its own bias and prejudice, yet ultimately they’re what we’ve got to pursue criminal investigations and any hope of justice.  Not an easy film to deal with, exposing open wounds along the way, yet illuminating, especially the skewed angle of the final shot, turning the world upside down, actually imagining other, perhaps even worse, possibilities.  In the meantime, white neo-Nazi’s continue to be the most troubling of all the extremist movements, but overlooked because they’re not Muslim or ISIS, just part of the prevailing racist worldview that insists dark skinned terrorists are more lethal.  They couldn’t be more mistaken.