Ali - Fear Eats the Soul - Criterion Collection

Starring:Hark Bohm, Marquard Bohm, Rudolf Waldemar Brem, Anita Bucher, Peter Gauhe, Hannes Gromball, El Hedi ben Salem, Katharina Herberg, Irm Hermann, Elma Karlowa, Gusti Kreissl, Doris Mattes, Brigitte Mira, Peter Moland, Lilo Pempeit, Karl Scheydt, Walter Sedlmayr, Margit Symo, Barbara Valentin
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid tribute to his mentor, Douglas Sirk, with this loose adaptation of All That Heaven Allows, the classic American soaper of a widow falling for younger man to the disapproval of family and friends. Fassbinder combines the Sirk melodrama with the story told in his own The American Soldier. An aging, lonely charwoman (sweet old Brigitte Mira) befriends a Moroccan guest worker (El Hedi ben Salem) at least 20 years her junior. Finding comfort and happiness in one another's company, they suddenly marry. Her kids are aghast, his friends appalled, and the neighborhood turns its back, so the two pull together for support. Their relationship ironically begins to unravel when the pressure of community prejudice eases and they must confront the gulf between them. Combining melodrama with social commentary, Fassbinder offers a sharp, incisive portrait of prejudice in modern Germany grounded in contemporary social conditions. Mira delivers a tender, vulnerable performance and Fassbinder molds Salem's stiffness into a distinctive character trait of a man ill at ease in German society. It's an assured and beautiful film, full of gliding camerawork and evocative images, and invested with intimacy and gentleness. Even Fassbinder's characteristically grim conclusion defies tragedy for a glimmer of hope, a welcome and affecting rarity in his career. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, already the director of almost twenty films by the age of 29, paid homage to his cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk, with this updated version of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. Lonely widow Emmi Kurowsky (Brigitte Mira) meets Arab worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. To their own surprise (and to the shock of family, colleagues, and drinking buddies) they fall in love. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen seele auf), Fassbinder expertly uses the emotional power of the melodrama to underscore the racial tensions threatening German culture.

Customer Reviews:

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.......2007-07-03

A scathing satire on romance, racism, and German-Arab relations, Fassbinder's "Ali" is a brilliant reminder that love can soothe only when it is sanctioned by a social community. Inspired by Douglas Sirk's 1955 "All That Heaven Allows," the film deals with human vulnerability and the alienating effects of isolation due to age, class, and one's skin color, glimpsing a tender but troubled relationship between two outcasts. Mira, one of Fassbinder's favorite actresses, is simply heartbreaking as Emmi, a 60-ish woman with a realistic outlook on sex and love. Achingly intimate and peppered with poignant humor, "Ali" is one of the writer-director's most soulful works.

"The story of impossible love".......2007-01-12

This powerful and gentle film tells the story of love and marriage of Emmi, a 60+ widowed German cleaning lady and Ali, a Moroccan immigrant mechanic who is more than 20 (I think close to 30) years her younger. Their affair and the decision to marry shocked everyone who knew Emmi: her grown children, her neighbors, coworkers (mostly, middle-aged widows as herself) and even the owner of a neighborhood grocery shop where she has been a loyal customer for years. The way clever and observant Fassbinder looks at their struggle to keep the relationship is deeply pessimistic - the couple could survive the obstacles that society would create for them. They can survive disapproval, misunderstanding and prejudice but at the very moment they think all problems are in the past, they find the emptiness inside and two lonely hearts together are even worse than one. The more I think of it the more I realize that "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" is among the best, the most poignant, gentlest and heartbreaking descriptions of unavailability for happiness ever filmed. What makes the movie even more poignant is the fact that both Fassbinder and El Hedi ben Salem, the man whom Fassbinder loved and who played Ali committed suicide in the same year, Fassbinder - a few weeks after El Hedi. The film is also a love letter to El Hedi. In one of the film's most moving scene, Emmi looks at the man with whom she so suddenly and desperately fell in love with admiration, longing, and wise sadness while he dries himself after the shower. It is not only Emmi looks at Ali, it is Rainer looks with love and affection at the man he loved through the lenses of his camera.

4.5/5

Two generations from Hitler.......2006-10-13

The movie is misnamed. The title makes you think that it is a horror flick, but there is little fear and no soul-eating going on.

A dark skinned Arab man from Morocco lives in Germany in the 1970s. The German people, just one or two generations from that happy Nazi Generation we were all so fond of, detest all foreigners and call most of them Ali. The greatest shame would be for a German woman to marry one, God Forbid. That would make her a whore.

Enter Emmi, a middle aged German widow. Enter Ali, a young Arab man who turns out to like middle aged German widows who are nice. They dance, they talk, they go to bed, they get married. It is an impulse marriage. They hardly know each other, and the engagement is a matter of hours, not months.

Much of the impact of the movie comes from the reaction that Emmi's neighbors, co-workers and children have to her apostasy. They shun her. One of her sons kicks her tv set in. It really doesn't pay for someone to be non-German in Germany. It gets you despised. A generation or two after murdering every Jew in sight, these lovely people are two minutes away from doing it again, to other foreigners in their midst. It reminds me of how proud the German people are of themselves in those beer commercials, and those car commercials, as they boast of their German heritage. I've never once seen a Toyota commercial boasting of its Japanese origin. On the contrary, many Toyota commercials are more American than apple pie, French fries and baseball.

It surprised me that a German language film would be propaganda against the German people. I'm not exaggerating. For half the film, you can't help but hate Germans because of how they are portrayed here.

The movie takes a sharp turn later on, and stops being a propaganda film against the German people and their racism. It starts to be about our happy couple, Emmi and her forbidden husband Ali. Each of them begins to show a fault or two, like Emmi's crotchety ways, bullying Ali about not eating couscous and becoming more German, and Ali's reaction, to seek out some solitude and an old girlfriend.

As for the German people, they stop being "haters" and start being "takers", as they decide to stop harassing and shunning poor Emmi because after all, they need a favor or two. For example, the son who kicked in her tv set now needs babysitting services, so he apologizes to mom. The store owner who threw the apostate couple out of his store changes his ways after realizing that he sure could use her patronage.

This is an eye opening movie. I had heard that the German people are extremely racist still, and hate Turks and other foreigners, and in fact attack them every chance they get, like German shepherds who were brought up badly. Well, now we get to see it, and from a German director no less.

I think it is an interesting touch that Fassbinder has his heroin Emmi going to Hitler's favorite restaurant. This is symbolic of the whole movie. She really has no aversion to Hitler, though she is warm and tolerant of foreigners if they just ease up on the couscous.

Touching Tale.......2006-09-23

The influence of director Douglas Sirk on the output of Fassbinder is notable. Like Sirk, Fassbinder utilised the melodramatic form (a form often dismissed by critics) to take apart and satirise the society he was a part of. "Fear Eats the Soul" is one of Fassbinder's more transparent efforts, as he shows the prejudice and jealousy eating away at the heart of society. But unlike "All That Heaven Allows" Fassbinder's subject matter deals with a very sensitive and touchy issue in German society at the time. The racial bigotry evident in the film is particularly disturbing, for it shows that the foundations of Nazism, which were after all based initially on racial prejudice are still very much alive. Interweaved into these concerns is a very human tale, which is very affecting on an emotional level. Relationships in Fassbinder films are regularly flawed and miserable prospects and he takes this to an extreme in this film, a doomed quality permeates every scene as does the decadence and apathy, reflected in the dull décor and sleepy character behaviour. The two central performances are touching and affecting, this is probably Fassbinder's most accessible and rewarding of films.

Deeply moving and touching. .......2006-07-21

This is a deeply moving and touching film about an odd-couple living in extremely racist society. I highly recommend it if you can find it. The film may bring many people to tears.

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