Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven Shows A New Style for Drama
Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a moving story of lives intersecting out of fiction like coincidence yet convincingly real because of its matter of fact presentation.
I put Akin between the dramatic Hollywood or Indian cinema style and the straight forward, non-actors casting, documentary like Irani films of the Makhmalbafs.
The story skids through briskly. Characters are established effortlessly without celebration. They leave the scheme similarly. Yeter’s part: a middle aged woman, a prostitute to pay for her daughter’s education, threatened by religious thugs (side note: do explore the etymology of the word thug) to quit the profession agrees to move in with an old man for money – this in itself could be blown up into a feature. Akin breezes through it.
I took note of his courage to edit: Ayten knocks on a door seeking help to get to the roof. After the two women have an eye contact, Ayten is next seen on the roof. Same for Lotte.
It is refreshing to find no overt style. The happy and sad moments are not heightened. While I felt moved, I wasn’t goaded with melodrama or background music. To be honest, the background music does have crescendos but it rarely suggests or leads.
The Edge of Heaven is a moving story of musical chairs. We might see it to be cold in its presentation in contrast to how we express drama, yet it is very warm inside. The four crying scenes: when Lotte is in the phone booth, in the lawyers room, when Sussane Staub is in the Turkish hotel, and when Ayten meets the mother, are all very real like. Especially Susanne Staub’s scene: shot very objectively like a close circuit camera shot, amplifies the solitude.
The sorrow in the film is inevitable. When Ayten first comes to Lotte’s house, you know she is bringing trouble. You can sense it in the mother and of course in the chapter titles. Also sense it from Akin’s method to express Ayten. Ayten is a socially abrasive personality, as a result of her growing up alone, who is now a political rebel. She smokes in Staub’s kitchen disregarding her and cusses in the kitchen.
It is difficult to pick a protagonist, a hub. Everybody who comes in the movie owns the story. Nobody is a side note. Everybody’s life seems equally important and explored.
I loved the landscape scenes and the Turkish inner city streets; reminded me of many places in India. Also had fun taking special note of some Turkish words like kabool and chai. A lot happens in the film and I did not feel lost. The film has one of the best endings you will see in cinema. Nurgül Yesilçay (Ayten) is hot and no conversation about this movie should leave out that detail.
Watch the film because it is a very good film. Watch the film to expand the definition of a feature film, and to remind yourself from time to time of what a film can be like (along with Synecdoche, New York).
The Edge of Heaven is available on Netflix instant play
Tags: Auf der anderen Seite, Fatih Akin, Germany, netflix instant, Nurgül Yesilçay, the edge of heaven, Turkey
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one of the best Fatih Akin film.
I just love how he handles the strong characters in all his films.
I see it as him managing to make every character strong. This is the only Fatih Akin I’ve seen. Got Head On in my queue.
see Head on.I think it is the best from Fatih Akin.