Atta Turk! Director Akin Breaking Hearts With Dark Drama

The Edge of Heaven
Running time 122 minutes
Written and directed by Fatih Akin
Starring Baki Davrak, Tuncel Kurtiz, Nursel Köse, Nurgul Yeşilçay, Hanna Schygulla

Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite), from his own screenplay in English, German and Turkish with English subtitles, succeeds in transcending an amazing series of coincidences with its compassionate treatment of several transplanted Turkish and German characters, both parents and children, on a not-so-merry-go-round between placid Bremen, Germany, and tumultuous Istanbul. Mr. Akin, the son of Turkish parents, was born and educated in Germany, and on the evidence of his previous film, Head-On (2004), and now The Edge of Heaven, he sees in the clash of the two cultures the dramatic sparks of fiery personal tragedies.

There are two coffins shown being transported to airplanes, one bound from Bremen to Istanbul, and the other from Istanbul to Bremen. Both contain the bodies of vibrant human beings we have come to know before they became victims of grotesque homicides that were nonetheless rooted in their own passions and the passions of the people around them.

The narrative starts and stops arbitrarily between at first seemingly disconnected pieces of time and space, first in Turkey, and then in Germany. Eventually, we are introduced to the major characters, beginning and ending with Nejat Aksu (Baki Davrak), a Turkish-German philosophy professor living and teaching in Bremen. Of course, it is very possible that the seemingly sexless Nejat serves as the writer-director’s alter ago.

Nejat lives in Bremen with his retired pensioner father, Ali Aksu (Tuncel Kurtiz), a lusty, drunken old widower, who persuades a Turkish-speaking prostitute he accidentally encounters to move in with him. The prostitute, Yeter Öztürk (Nursel Köse), is reluctant at first, but when two of her outraged co-religionists threaten her with bodily harm if she doesn’t discontinue her shameful activities, she quickly decides to move in with Ali. Nejat is at first scandalized by his father’s new “living arrangement,” but when he discovers that Yeter is supporting with her earnings a college-age daughter back in Turkey, he becomes more sympathetic to her plight. After suffering a heart attack from which he slowly recovers, Ali angrily and mistakenly suspects that Nejak’s shift in attitude indicates that his son is sleeping with Yeter. One day, when Yeter resists his drunken advances and tries to leave, Ali pushes her to the floor so hard that he accidentally kills her.

While Ali is imprisoned for the murder and later deported back to Turkey, Nejat resolves to abandon his profession and go to Istanbul to find the late Yeter’s daughter, Ayten Öztürk (Nurgul Yeşilçay). Nejat was much too late, however, inasmuch as Ayten, a student revolutionary, had long since fled Turkey after sleeping through a failed street demonstration, and ended up—where else?—in Bremen sleeping through Nejat’s lecture on Goethe.

The distinctive shot of her sleeping through the lecture is shown twice, both before and after we know the identity of the sleeping student. This repetition of images is typical of the film’s narrative strategy. By this constant circling back, the characters become more inevitably driven by their fateful feelings. It is as if an added layer of characterization has been added to the narrative, formally enhancing its impact, and enriching its content.

When Ayten is impulsively befriended by a German student, Lotte Staub (Patrycia Ziolkowska), we already know this relationship will end badly for this newcomer to the story, because this section of the film is titled by the writer-director “Lotte’s Death.” In any event, Ayten and Lotte become impassioned lovers, much to the dismay of Lotte’s at first helplessly bourgeois mother, Susanne Staub, played by Hanna Schygulla, the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s muse in nearly half of his 50 films, from the late ’60s to the early ’80s. One of the foremost sensual icons of her time, Ms. Schygulla at 64 still retains her overpowering intensity in her projection of a mother’s grief over the loss of a daughter. Yet, as an integral part of a magnificently talented ensemble, she never diminishes the assorted charisma of the other major characters she encounters. Still, the bereaved mother’s intervention is decisive in consoling and embracing Ayten over the death of their mutually beloved Lotte, and persuading Nejak to rejoin his errant father.

The last image of Nejak sitting on the shore of the Black Sea patiently waiting for this father to return from a fishing trip is held for several minutes all the way to the conclusion of the end credits. It is a haunting expression of the forgiveness and reconciliation that make up the noblest transaction imaginable for children estranged from their parents.

Mr. Akin has created an epical masterpiece centered on otherwise ordinary lives disrupted by the restless movements of whole populations from one domain to another. The Edge of Heaven is Mr. Akin’s eloquent demonstration of the viability of bridging the abyss between two supposedly irreconcilable visions of the earth’s inhabitants at the edge of one heaven or another. Mr. Akin’s own mixed heritage has enabled him to focus on a shared humanity without glossing over the hatreds and bigotries that conspire to keep us all apart. Now, more than ever, The Edge of Heaven is a film to be seen, savored and thoughtfully appreciated.