Product Details

• Actors: Anita Bucher, El Hedi ben Salem, Irm Hermann, Elma Karlowa, Gusti Kreissl
• Directors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• Format: Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: German (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion
• DVD Release Date: June 24, 2003
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000093NQY
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,001 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (The Criterion Collection)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want some couscous?, February 12, 2004

By 

Kim Anehall "www.cinematica.org" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a wonderful story with a strong socioeconomic message that can be compared to Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1956) and Far From Heaven (2002) by Todd Haynes where an older woman loves a younger man from a different ethnic group. Fassbinder's film takes place in Munich in the shadow of the 1972 Olympics when Arab terrorists took part of the Israel Olympic team hostage, which ended in a blood bath. Nevertheless, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a completely unrelated story to the bloodshed that took place in 1972 as it is told around Ali, a Moroccan guest worker, and Emmi, an older German woman, who fall in love with one another. Ali and Emmi come across each other at a local Arabian bar as Emmi seeks shelter from the rain outside. Ali and Emmi dance, converse, and Emmi invites Ali home for a nightcap as she is suffering from loneliness. Together they have to confront prejudice and racism as their relationship progresses since Ali looks and speaks differently than the German people around them. During their struggle they decide to go on a short vacation in order to escape the intolerance that surrounded them and as they come back Ali and Emmi begin to have their own doubts of their relationship. Fassbinder's film is a brilliant story and it uses some interesting cinematography that elevates the cinematic experience. However, the sound quality of the dialogues removes the realistic tone of the environment which sounds recorded and the characters are sometimes awkwardly portrayed by the cast. Nevertheless, Fassbinder created a truly unique cinematic experience as he colors the environment with his own touch and it leaves the audience with a great feeling.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The story of impossible love", January 11, 2007

By 

Galina (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MOULDINGS ........, January 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Ali - Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Considering all of the hoopla surrounding "Far From Heaven" - excellent though it is - one should not forget this earlier tribute to Douglas Sirk - and in some ways more fitting .....

Considering the unglamorous framework used by Fassbinder 'reducing' the elevated Jane Wyman [Julianne Moore] role to a blue collar charlady {the very superior Brigitte Mira} this version speaks volumes and addresses perhaps the universal fear of the 'slightly different'.

Very unsettling to watch 30 years ago - still unsettling under today's 'wraps'.