Auf der Anderen Seite : The Edge of Heaven

After being fed movies like Kidnap and Bachna Ae Haseeno for most of the year, when you suddenly get a choice of a movie like The Edge of Heaven, most of us choose to pass up on it. The reason is not difficult to fathom - we are so used to dumbed-down movies with predictable plot lines and happy endings (ALMOST all of them still have happy endings – an Aamir or Mumbai Meri Jaan is still the exception) that, in our minds we are all afraid that we wouldn’t be able to comprehend a meaningful movie – or that it would be too much effort.

I myself admit I too belong to the same lazy group – but the few times that I do make an effort to go and watch such a movie – the experience is very satisfying.
The highlight of Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is its simplicity – the director doesn’t use any stylized sequences (like some big Hollywood directors) – or go for elaborate visuals at exotic locations. He narrates his story in a simple visual style – yet the story itself has such character that it lingers in your mind long after you have exited the hall – like a good wine.

The story unfolds in layers – starting with a Turkish migrant Ali, who lives in Bremen and his son Nejat, who is a professor in Hamburg University. Ali, bored with his retired life, meets a prostitute Yeter - and asks her to move in with him. However, fate alters the best laid plans of men (this is THE recurring theme of the movie) and things don’t quite work out as planned. Nejat heads out to Istanbul to search for Yeter’s daughter Ayten (who doesn’t know about her mom’s livelihood – she thinks Yeter is a shoemaker) but fate intervenes again. Ayten is a member of a partisan student movement and is on the run from the Istanbul police – she goes to Bremen looking for her mom, the shoemaker. There she meets and befriends a German girl Lotte who helps her out.

It’s a story of how the lives of six characters – Ali, Nejat, Yeter, Ayten, Lotte and Lotte’s mom Susanne – intertwine with each other. The narrative happens in a very subtle fashion – and the characters criss-cross each other with minimum fuss (no drum rolls or lengthy face-closeups). Performance wise, none of the 6 is a standout – in this movie, the story is the king. But nevertheless all of them do their job competently.

Ofcourse, coming from a good filmmaker – you can never guess whats going to come next. Even when he announces like a chapter - ‘Yeter’s Death’ - you cannot predict how it is going to come. Or rather, he throws you off the track with some very convincing red herrings.

Negatives ? Well the movie is a little slow I guess.

In the end – everything comes down to the climax - how does he end the story? And he does it in the same way as he has made the rest of the movie - with extreme simplicity. And the way the story ends – you are again beaten by the director in the guessing game. Make no mistake, the story ends properly, with no loose ends – but its just not the ending you were imagining it would be.