Wednesday, May 28, 2008

by Ari

Fatih Akin established himself with the surprise hit Head-On a couple years back , a film that was critically acclaimed for its raw emotional power and immediate filmmaking. I wasn't as enamored by it as a lot of people were, but there was no doubt Akin's craft had something about it to keep an eye on. His new film, The Edge of Heaven, premiered at Cannes last year and won best screenplay for its twisting, meticulously structured narrative. These types of films usually bring to mind Robert Altman or now Paul Thomas Anderson (who was obviously influenced by the late American master), but I'd say The Edge of Heaven most closely resembles the writing of Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Babel) in its intensity and depth. However, where Arriaga sometimes gets carried away with coincidence for the sake of revealing some grand emotional release, Akin carefully intertwines the different narrative threads without reaching excess or manipulating the audience. It's rather beautiful how the story slowly unravels, and when it hit the final moment, I found the film to be transcendent and breathtaking.

The story is divided into three parts: "Yeter's Death", "Lotte's Death", and "The Edge of Heaven" , connecting the relationships between a father and son, a mother and daughter and the few people caught in between. Yeter (Nursel Köse) is a prostitute who develops a friendship of sorts with a lonely old man named Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz). After a tragic turn of events, Ali's son Nejat (Baki Davrak), a professor in Germany, decides to contact Yeter's estranged daughter but has difficulty finding her. It turns out she's part of a political resistance movement in Turkey and flees to Germany to escape arrest. In Germany she meets and falls in love with a young student, Charlotte (an amazing performance by Patrycia Ziolkowska) and after that things become increasingly complicated. It's with the plot between Yeter's daughter, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) and Charlotte that things begin to cross with the previous chapter. As the story progresses you get a feel for the mastery of Akin's writing and direction. The last portion of the film is nothing short of remarkable, and the way certain images repeat and different thematic elements mix together is both devastating and touching.

This is not to be missed.