Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some Keen Observations of Parent Child Relationships, October 26, 2008
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE) is a superb piece of writing by writer/director Fatih Akin - a study essentially about family fragility and strength as heightened by the immigrant struggles that both bond and divide. It is an intelligent film, well acted, and presented in a challenging manner that defines it as an art film of the first order.
We are given three families to inspect, families whose paths cross not only by coincidence by also by a common 'border' between Germany and Turkey - a division that provides not only tension and emphasis in separation and communication flaws in relationships, but also allows the sensitive cinematographer the opportunity to contrast the dark German portions with the hot light of the Turkish segments.
The film opens innocently enough with a scene where young professor Nejat (Baki Davrak), a Turkish immigrant teaching in Germany, stops for gas - an ordinary event in life that will be recapitulated at movie's close. Nejat's elderly father Ali Aksu (Yuncel Kurtiz) wanders the red light district and encounters a Turkish immigrant hooker Yeter (Nusel Kose) whom he invites to come live with him for the same money that she would make in prostitution. The home setting (Nejat, Ali, Yeter) is flawed and at the moment of dissolution Yeter dies accidentally during an altercation with Ali. Ali is jailed and Nejat feels compelled to go to Istanbul to find and assist Yeter's daughter. Meanwhile Yeter's daughter Ayten (Nurgut Yesilcay) is participating in anti government demonstrations and manages to flee to Germany to find her mother and is befriended by Lotte (Patrycia Ziokowska), a student whose mother Susanne (Hanna Schygulla) disapproves of Lotte's relationship with Ayten. Ayten is forced to flee to Istanbul, Lotte follows and tragedy occurs. In a manner of twists and turns and fast-forwards and reflective moments the three families (Nejat/Ali, Yeter/Ayten, and Susanne/Lotte) intersect, always propelled by the need for acceptance and love and succor.
The levels of interpretation are many and writer/director Fatih Akin serves them well. The superb cinematography is in the masterful hands of Rainer Klausmann and the musical score is enhanced by recordings of a late Turkish artist as integrated by composer Shantel . This is a stunning, fast paced, emotionally involving film filled with pleas of understanding of many problems that daily call for our attention. In Turkish, German an English with subtitles. Grady Harp, October 08
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Perimeters of Chance, August 19, 2008
The emotional impact of this bleak cinema will not need enhancement, and the "story" is intentionally predictable from about minute 15 to the end. What I want to address is the "intellectual" content, since I think this is a film with fairly explicit intellectual aspirations -- in other words, a movie that makes a statement about life.
Coincidental relationships and chance encounters frame nearly every action/event of this film. Nothing that happens is inevitable or dramatically "necessary", yet everything is contingent on random intersections of people and places that another film-maker might perceive as fateful or predestined. Yet equally possible coincidences and indeed encounters that "we" are set up to expect don't occur as expected. Coincidence is no more powerful than non-coincidence; contingency is awkwardly random in the film-maker's vision of life, and resolution is utterly illusory. Perhaps only a Turk, or another person raised in a culture of religious predeterminism, could offer such insights into the linear inconsequentiality of existence -- "just one d_mn thing after another."
The Edge of Heaven is also a painful depiction of alienation -- the alienation of 'guestworker" Turks in Germany, of political dissidence, and of generational conflict, a father-son and a mother-daughter, the former Turks and the latter Germans. This isn't the core of the movie so much as the substrate in which the character development takes place.
Wonderful acting! Especially from Hanna Schygulla, who plays the German mother so plausibly that you will hardly remember her as the star of German "art" films of yesteryear. Any time an actor/actress is unrecognizable, that's art!
Definitely a movie that you will leave feeling less ebullient than when you arrived; the reward is emotional insight rather than entertainment. It reminded me a good deal of Babel, though it's more modest and perhaps more real. If you appreciated Babel, you will surely relish Edge of Heaven.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
an ingeniously constructed tale of the part fate plays in our lives, January 24, 2009
****1/2
Making symmetry of form out of seemingly random events, the Turkish-German co-production entitled "The Edge of Heaven" is a complex and beautifully realized human drama built on a series of carefully worked-out interlocking coincidences and parallel events. The movie, written and directed by Fatih Akin, begins when an old Turkish man living in Germany accidental kills a prostitute he has paid to come and live with him. As a means of atonement, the man's guilt-ridden son, a language professor at a German university, journeys to Istanbul to find the woman's daughter and offer her assistance in financing her college education. Unbeknownst to him, the daughter is a member of a "radical" political group that the Turkish government has decreed to be a terrorist organization. The plot becomes increasingly complicated as it continually wanders off onto unexpected pathways, introducing new and fascinating characters at each turn, and finally coming full circle around on itself at the end. Suffice it to say, there are two unexpected murders, two sets of mothers and daughters, three pairs of parents and children, and two young ladies of a more than kindred spirit that become part of the finely woven tapestry of this film.
One of the primary virtues of "The Edge of Heaven" is that it doesn't feel compelled to follow any kind of standard storytelling arc just to please its audience. It spends a certain amount of time with one set of characters, then moves on to another set, not concerned if we don't get all the connections right off the bat. Major characters become minor ones, and minor ones major as the movie advances through its storyline. Yet, perhaps that is a misleading way of putting it, for, in this movie, no one can ever be a truly "minor" player - for the film is based on the premise that even the most seemingly random, inconsequential event can set off a chain reaction of future events, all leading to major, sometimes devastating and certainly unforeseeable consequences for the people involved. This lack of a conventional narrative purges the movie of contrivance, even when the characters keep crossing paths with one another in ways that would normally place a strain on our credulity. Here, however, thanks to the naturalism in both the performances and the direction, this small-world pattern feels ever so right.
Filled with beautiful, heartfelt performances, "The Edge of Heaven" presents its tale of forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation in a form that is wholly unique and quietly spellbinding. As with a beautiful pointillist painting, the movie reveals its full picture only after we have stood far enough back from it to be able to view it in its entirety. And what a beautiful picture it turns out to be.
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