LOVE
IN EXILE
by Howard Schumann
Forgiveness, redemption, repentance, and connection form
interweaving themes of Fatih Akin’s complex and multi-layered
film The Edge of Heaven. Titled On the
Other Side in German, the film is primarily character-driven but
is shaped by political, cultural, and family conflict that illuminate
the struggle between first and second-generation Turks and Germans and
their loneliness in exile. Akin builds his narrative on elaborate coincidences,
yet his characters are drawn with such nuance that we willingly go where
he takes us without questioning. Though The Edge of Heaven
is a realistic drama, shifts in the timeline and dreamlike visions introduce
surreal touches that serve to enhance its intensity.
Moving
between Germany and Turkey, The Edge of Heaven is divided into
three sections, two revealing a crucial plot point in its intertitle.
In the first section, Nejat (Baki Davrak), a second-generation Turk,
is a university professor in Hamburg, Germany. He is close to his father
Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz), a lonely widower who is a frequent visitor to the
red-light districts of Hamburg. When he falls for Yeter (Nursel Köse),
a Turkish prostitute, he asks her to move in with him and have sex whenever
he wants. When Yeter is intimidated by two Turkish fundamentalists on
the bus because of her profession, she decides to accept his offer.
Nejat also takes a liking to her and comforts her when she cries over
her estrangement from her 27-year-old daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay)
whom she has lost contact with in Istanbul. After a tragic accident
in his home, Nejat travels to Istanbul to try to locate Ayten to help
her in her education, purchasing a small bookstore while giving up his
teaching job in Hamburg. What he doesn’t know is that Ayten, a
militant political activist, has fled Turkey and returned to Germany
to find her mother and seek asylum.
In
Part Two, Ayten meets Lotte (Patrycia Zlolkowska), a German student
without clear direction in her life. To the consternation of Lotte’s
more conservative mother Susanne, brilliantly performed by former Fassbinder
star Hanna Schygulla, they move in together, forming a passionate sexual
relationship. Letting down her guard when stopped by police for a routine
traffic inspection, Ayten is arrested and sent back to Turkey after
her request for asylum is denied on the grounds that since Turkey has
applied for admission to the European Union it could not be a threat
to her safety. When Lotte soon follows her to Istanbul, another shocking
incident is precipitated and the final chapter follows the characters
as they deal with personal tragedy and seek reconciliation.
With
The Edge of Heaven, the 34-year-old Akin has vaulted into the
elite group of international directors whose films have a universal
appeal. It is not only that he is willing to confront serious issues
but that his characters are three-dimensional human beings who we believe
in and care about regardless of their politics. The Edge of Heaven
will have you applauding not only for an emotional power reminiscent
of Kieslowski, but for its message of forgiveness and empathy, offered
without pandering or sentimentality.
*
Living away from parents, having a job, a wife,
and children are ingredients that suggest maturity but do not guarantee
it. Mikey (Matt Boren), a recently married man in his thirties, comes
from California to visit his parents in New York and falls into a psychological
paralysis that keeps him from accepting the reality of his adult life.
Shot in the actual loft on Chambers Street in which he grew up, native
New York director Azazel Jacobs’ extraordinary Momma’s
Man zeroes in on our inability to let go, complete the
past, and move on. While his wife Laura (Dana Varon) and their infant
daughter wait for him in California, Mikey returns from the airport
to his parent’s home, invents a story that the flight was canceled
because of mechanical problems, and stays and stays. Ignoring his wife’s
urgent phone messages, he convinces himself that it is okay to stay
for a while.
Jacobs, the
son of experimental film director Ken Jacobs, has created a character
in Mikey who has obvious problems yet whose sweetness reaches out to
us even if we do not fully understand the source of his aberration or
even believe that he could really be the son of two very intellectual
artists, Ken and Flo (played by Jacobs’ real parents). Settling
into the claustrophobic yet oddly comforting environment of his childhood
loft filled with gadgets, trinkets, paintings, and sculptures, he rummages
through old letters, comic books, toys and the paraphernalia of his
childhood, contacts an old high school girl friend to apologize for
something the girl has completely forgotten about, visits a friend to
watch old boxing videos, and takes up his guitar to sing a lame high-school
song while mom and dad are trying to sleep.
Though mom and
dad sense that something is wrong and ask him repeatedly what’s
going on, he tells them that he is fine, refusing to confront his demons.
When pressed about his relationship, he makes up an affair for his wife
as the reason he needs time away from her. Soon he is physically unable
to leave the apartment and walk down the stairs to the street even though
he fortifies himself with half a bottle of wine. Though his parents
are caring, there is no truth telling and no sense of urgency. His mother
offers him cereal with fruit and tells him that he can stay as long
as he wants but seems unable to grasp the fact that he is sinking into
a black hole.
Momma’s Man is not just a film about pathology, however,
but about universal human longing, and it has enough touches of humor
that some have even called it a comedy. Whatever the genre you ascribe
to it, it is a film of rare honesty and naturalness that hits us where
it hurts. What makes it so unsettling is that Jacobs has reached a part
of us that yearns to relive the warm comforts of childhood when all
we had to do to feel self-worth was to crawl into our mother’s
lap and close our eyes. Unlike Mikey, however, most of us can open our
eyes, walk down the stairs and out the front door without looking back.
©2008 Howard Schumann
CineScene
