Transcending Borders

Exploring the divide between cultures and generations in Fatih Akin's excellent Edge of Heaven.

by Sam Adams

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Published: Jul 30, 2008

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MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN: Political activist Ayten (Nergül Yesilçay) finds romance and refuge with Charlotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska). (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The German-born Turkish director Fatih Akin has made only a handful of films, but he settled on his subject right from the beginning. Over the course of two features, one documentary and a handful of shorts, Akin has devoted himself to depicting the lives of Turks within present-day Germany, and the complicated relationship between the two countries. The German title of The Edge of Heaven, his first fiction feature since 2004's Head-On, translates as "on the other side." But "other" is a tricky word, especially when a movie changes perspective as many times as this one does.

Although its crisscrossing and overlapping plots defy easy summary, The Edge of Heaven's cast of characters boils down to three single parents and their grown children: Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) is an elderly Turk living in Bremen; his son, Nejat (Baki Davrak), teaches Goethe at a university. Ali meets Yeter (Nursel Köse), a Turkish prostitute, who tells him of the daughter, Ayten (Nerg'l Yesil'ay), she left behind in their mutual homeland. Ayten, a political activist, flees Turkey for Germany and takes refuge with Charlotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), whose mother, Susanne (Hanna Schygulla), disapproves of their relationship.

The Edge of Heaven follows in a long line of butterfly-effect dramas in which disparate characters are brought into contact or end up having critical effects on the lives of people they never meet. These movies proceed from a humanist impulse, but in practice they are often anything but, allowing the mechanics of plot to overwhelm the brotherhood-of-man subtext. But Akin throws the emphasis elsewhere, foreshadowing critical plot twists (the first of the movie's three sections is titled "Yeter's Death") and deliberately leaving ends untied. This is not a world where everything is wrapped up neatly, by fate or by force.

Although it's only mentioned directly on a handful of occasions, Turkey's bid to join the European Union plays a critical role in The Edge of Heaven. A Europe without borders is both promise and threat to the movie's characters, whose roots run deeper than they suspect. When Ali first solicits Yeter's services, he asks her if she "does French," and she replies, "I'm international." But the country she fled is not so easily left behind. As Ali leaves her basement room, she yells out to him in Turkish, at the exact instant that two Turkish men are passing by. Offended by her insult to their common culture, they accost her and threaten her with violence unless she finds another line of work. "You're a Turk, and a Muslim," they tell her, as if that settled all questions.

The younger generation takes mutability for granted: Nejat teaches German, while Charlotte studied English and French. They are citizens of the world, or so they see themselves. But Ayten, who, unlike Nejat, has grown to maturity in Turkey, sees the EU as a corporate enabler, lowering boundaries for the powerful while individuals grow farther apart. As her comrades are hauled off by the police after a demonstration turns violent, they shout out their names, as if to leave a record before the country's prisons swallow them whole. The bystanders merely hoot and applaud, praising the police for disposing of a nagging irritant.

In The Edge of Heaven, the borders that cause the most harm are those that prevent one person from seeing another. As the closest thing to a representative of the old order, Schygulla's bourgeois mother pays a particularly high price for her empathetic failings. Resenting Ayten's presence in her home, she sees her not only as a no-good foreigner but as a representation of all her own daughter's disappointments. Eventually, they will come to understand each other, but only at great cost to both of them. Schygulla, once Fassbinder's femme fatale, plays her hidebound hausfrau as a tragic heroine, never letting her be reduced to an allegorical punching bag.

In deference to The Edge of Heaven's structural complexity, Akin has toned down some of the visual flash of his earlier films, but you don't miss it for a second. Akin has had a great subject all along, and he's finally found the approach to go with it.

(s_adams@citypaper.net)

The Edge of Heaven | Written and directed by Fatih Akin | A Strand Releasing release

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