Cinematical

Watching Faith Akin's newest film, The Edge of Heaven, I got that weird feeling that you can get during any film festival -- that you're seeing so many 'innovative' movies that you start putting quote marks around 'innovative.' Akin's latest movie is about a father and son, and a mother and a daughter; it's also about the gulf and gap between Europe and Turkey, between the West and Islam, between repentance and forgiveness. The Edge of Heaven is strong and artful and well-made, but it also feels like its unpredictability is actually predictable, that its unconventional narrative is, in fact, conventional. Akin is himself a child of Turkish parents who grew up in Germany, like his lead character Nejat, and, like his film Head-On, The Edge of Heaven's informed by that perspective, seeking out the universal in the specifics of the story.

College professor Nejat (Baki Davrak) has a simple life -- classes, work, the occasional visit to see his father Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz). Ali is a widower, and one day makes an unusual proposition to a prostitute in Bremen's red light district, Yeter (Nursel Köse): Move in with him, so that she'll make money and he won't be alone. And she does. Nejat's not crazy about this -- nor should he be, as Ali and Yeter's arrangement becomes curdled and complicated. After a brief moment of anger on Ali's part results in Yeter's unintended death, Nejat tries to find the daughter she was sending money to back home in Turkey, Ayten (Nurgül Yescilay). Nejat doesn't know what Ayten even looks like, but he's trying to find her.
The cosmic joke is that while Nejat is traveling through Turkey to find Ayten, she's already fled Turkey for Germany; the activist group she's part of has come under police scrutiny, and she's fleeing arrest and persecution. While there -- scrounging, scrambling, striving -- Ayten meets Lotte (Patrycia Ziolokowsa), a student who takes Ayten in. Soon -- and despite the disapproval of Lotte's mother, Susanne (Hanna Schygulla) -- Ayten is living in their home, and Lotte's lover. Lotte is wide-eyed and kind; Susanne a bit cooler. When Ayten talks about the problems she faced back home, Susanne just keeps repeating the same phrase: "Maybe things will be better when Turkey joins the European Union ..."

Maybe, but that's a long way off: Ayten is arrested, deported, and then Lotte follows her to Turkey, finding a room with ... Najat, who's moved to Istanbul, still seeking Ayten. You'd think that these characters might swap stories, compare notes, connect the dots. They don't. I don't mind when a director plays God -- its part of what we go to the movies for -- but I do ask that a director play God well and fairly; Akin doesn't quite manage that, as circumstances go from bad to worse.

The Edge of Heaven is gorgeously shot, and full of rich performances; standouts include Schugulla's loving-yet-distant mother, and Davrak's portrait of Najat's innate decency. Akin's film also makes modern Turkey and modern Germany both come alive in the film, investing every scene with a real sense of place. But the coincidences and circumstances of the film feel a little strained, feel more cleverly constructed than sincerely shaped. To make a fairly obvious comparison, anyone who enjoyed Babel will probably enjoy The Edge of Heaven -- it's in some ways a better film -- but again, I can't help but feel that The Edge of Heaven's twists and tricks are, in their own way, predictably unexpected. We're all connected, except when we aren't, Akin's telling us -- and in the era of Babel, Crash, Magnolia and similar shifting, sprawling narratives, The Edge of Heaven's just another journey down what used to be the road less traveled.