Girl On The Edge | Political activist Nurgül Yesilçay escapes from Turkey to Germany in The Edge of Heaven.
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
Directed by Fatih Akin. Starring Hanna Schygulla, Nurgül Yesilçay, Baki Davrak, Tuncel Kuritz. Opens Fri., Aug. 29.
***1/2
There’s a point near the beginning of The Edge of Heaven where Nejet, the withdrawn academic son, brings his gambling, drinking, terribly lonely father Ali a book. Ali’s natural response is to ask what it’s about; after a beat of consideration, Nejet simply tells him to read it.
In his second feature film, writer/director Fatih Akin (whose 2004 debut Head-On won him armloads of international awards) makes the question “What is it about?” almost impossible to answer. Take your pick: fraying cultures and filling cultural divides, father-son relationships, mother-daughter relationships, home, human foibles, fate, death, all viewed through Akin’s slow, steady, slightly bluish camera lens.
The Edge of Heaven flits back and forth between Turkey and Germany, its non-linear script relating two inward-spiralling and, unbeknownst to the characters, interconnected stories which never quite meet.
Ali, played with slippery charm by Tuncel Kuritz, attempts to fill his lonesome days by offering a Turkish-born prostitute, Yeter, an altogether unromantic way out of Hamburg’s red-light district: for 3,000 euros a month, she will live and sleep with only him. Ali’s son disapproves of the whole thing, until he finds out Yeter’s career choice is financing her daughter’s education. Predictably, Ali’s brutish chauvinism begins to show and Yeter ends up dead after an alcohol-fuelled fight.
Ashamed of his father, Nejet travels down to Istanbul to find Yeter’s daughter Ayten so that he can offer to pay for her education and fulfill Yeter’s wishes. However, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) has disappeared — later we learn she escaped to Germany as a political refugee. So what do you do when your father is a murderous john and you can’t make amends to the daughter that’s left behind? You buy a German language bookstore shoved into the streets of Istanbul and wait. All the while, Ayten is running about Hamburg, falling in love with a gal named Lotte, getting extradited, getting her lover killed, and so on.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice making a heartfelt arthouse flick. Despite the plot’s complicated configuration and a certain Crash-like reliance on coincidence, The Edge of Heaven is nevertheless a fascinating look into our shrinking world and the cultural collisions that result. (It won the award for Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.)
The international cast all make strong impressions while avoiding any overwrought performances, except, perhaps, Yesilçay as the hotheaded activist. Veteran German actress Hanna Schygulla stands out as Susanne, Lotte’s mother. Her quiet concern for her daughter as she falls for Ayten, a girl Susanne thinks “likes to fight too much,” turns into wrenching grief upon her death. While she says little in the film, the lingering shots of her crumpled body as she tries to deal with her daughter’s passing say more than enough.
Why does the impulsive, childlike Lotte have to die? What is the meaning of forgiveness? Of atonement? What is this story “about”? The Edge of Heaven is preoccupied with questions like those — and the answers which we always just seem to miss.
