The Edge of Heaven

When I saw “Head-On,” (2004) a story of angst, alienation, and sex among Turkish immigrants living in Germany, I was deeply impressed by the wild exuberance of the characters and the conservative ending of the narrative. Fatih Akin, who was born in Germany but is of Turkish heritage, made the film, and is now out with another, “The Edge of Heaven,” (2008) likewise concerned with dispossession and the conflicted nature of immigrants in the modern world. Despite the violence in the film, it is gentler, very sensitive, and more expansive in terms of character. It is about six characters in search of each other—two mothers, two daughters, and a father and a son—as they criss-cross between Germany and Turkey and back again, finally ending in Turkey, with a scene on a beach by the Black Sea.

The movie opens with Ali (Runcel Kurtiz), a retired elderly Turkish man making a tour of a red light district in Bremen, Germany. He picks out a middle-aged hooker name Yeter (Nusel Kose), also Turkish, and the two hit it off, so Ali makes a number of return visits. In between she is threaten by some Islamic moral guardians who tell her to quit her trade or die. Fortuitously, Ali makes her an offer she can’t refuse: Come live with me and I’ll pay for everything. She says yes, by all means, it is better than death. His only proviso is you must sleep with only me. Ali lives with his son, Nejat (Baki Davarak), a professor of German Literature in Bremen, a quiet, studious young man. At first he is skeptical about his father’s deal with Yeter, but after a heart-to-heart with her he begins to appreciate her. He also finds out she has a 27 year old daughter in Turkey who is a student. But the old man is very jealous and drinks a lot, and he gets it in his head his son has had sex with Yeter, and in a rage he accidentally kills her and ends up in jail. Nejat disowns his father for his brutal act and heads to Turkey to find the daughter to make amends for the father, perhaps by offering her financial aid. But in Istanbul it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The girl, named Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcy), is no longer a student but a political activist against a government she considers oppressive. The first time we see her she is running from the secret police after she fires a couple shots from a handgun. They see her as a “terrorist” but she calls herself a “freedom-fighter.” Ironically, she flees Turkey just as Nejat arrives there; she heads to Germany. While on the run she encounters a German student, Lotte Straub (Patrycia Ziolkowska) who helps her and who is taken by Ayten’s beauty and passion. An affair commences which disturbs Lotte mother, Susanne, who is played by none other than the Fassbinder star from the seventies, Hanna Schygulla, now a rotund older woman of 65. The glamour is gone but she still has presence on screen and handles her role with considerable skill. She disapproves of the politics, not the Lesbian thing. Then disaster intervenes as the police stop the two girls and Ayten is incarcerated, as a person without papers. Meanwhile, Nejat has given up his search for Ayten (whose traveling under another name) and given up teaching and bought a small bookstore in order to stay in Turkey. He bought the store from a German who was homesick. When Ayten is shipped back to a prison in Turkey. Lotte follows her and tries to help, with no success. Along the way she happens to stop at Nejat’s bookstore and eventually rents a room from him. (Again we know the connection between them that they don’t know.) Ayten persuades Lotte to find the handgun that she hid and to bring it to her, as she and some others are preparing a prison break; but some street urchins snatch her purse and when she catches up to them one of the boys kills her with the gun. (This section of the film is titled “Lotte’s Death,” so I am not giving anything away.) When Ayten is given the news—Lotte’s death has turned into an international incident—she is crushed and feels an enormous guilt. When we see her mother buying the ticket for Turkey she is standing next to Ali, who is out of prison and going back to the village he was born in. They pass each other like the proverbial ships in the night of unknowingness. One has to wonder how often we all do that. Susanne cries for days when she gets to Istanbul, but finally emerges from her hotel determined to assist Ayten any way she can and to check where Lotte was living. On a whim, she rents Lotte’s old room, becomes friends with Nejat and helps Ayten get out of jail; she also helps resolve Nejat’s ill will toward his father. We see the two women, who had hated each other not long ago, embrace in the bookstore while Nejat is on his way to see his father, to practice a little forgiveness in his relationship with him. But Ali is out fishing but will be back soon, so we see Najet sit down to wait and as he waits the credits run. We never actually see him embrace his father but we believe it will happen.

In “The Edge of Heaven” life, fate, coincidence, forgiveness, and redemption weave their way through the six characters like strands of a puzzle seeking unity and comprehension. There are also a few shifts in time and space to enhance the sense of a background force to foreground events. The layered narrative also hints at a hidden cohesion. However, Akin stops short of connecting all the dots for us, letting the connections stay a tease of potential resolution and unity. For example, we never see Najet’s father show up. I also figured from the start of the movie that Najet and Ayten would get together, but the film ends before that could happen. If we so desire, since we know more than the characters do, we can connect the dots as we see fit. We could close the circle of fate and coincidence. Perhaps that is what Akin had in mind from the beginning. He was happy to make the brew, but we have to read the tea leaves.