Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Writer-director Fatih Akin (born in Hamburg in 1973 of Turkish parents who went to Germany during the 1960s) first came to international attention with “In July” (2000) a road movie stretching  from Hamburg to Istanbul. Although I did not like it as well, Akin’s 2004 “Head-On” (Gegen die Wand) was widely acclaimed, winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the European Film Award for best picture, and five German film awards, including best film and best direction.

After making a documentary on Turkish popular music, “Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul,” Akin took on an ambitious tale of six people (four of them born in Turkey) in Bremen and Hamburg, Istanbul and Trabzon in “The Edge of Heaven” (Auf der anderen Seite, which means “on the other dise,”2007). There are two mother-daughter pairs, one father-son one, and only one of the combinations of main characters does not share at least a frame of the film, though it is one in which one seeks the other.

I don’t want to give away much of the plot, though there are intertitles before two of the stories telegraphing the death of x. The first characters viewers see Ali Aksu (veteran Turkish actor Tuncel Kurtiz) and a prostitute in Bremen’s red-light district, “Jessy” (Nursel Köse) whom Ali hires and then convinces to move in with him (after she is threatened by some Islamist thugs).

Yeter (“Jessy”) sends money to Istanbul for her daughter Ayten’s (Nurgül Yesilçay) education. Ali’s son Nejat (Baki Davrak, who played Murat in “Lola and Billy the Kid”) is a professor of German in a Hamburg university and does not bristle at his father’s moving a prostitute in to live with him. Eventually, Nejat will go to Turkey to try to find Ayten, who joined some armed rebel group, fled to Germany where she is taken in by Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), a tall, blonde lesbian who lives with her mother Susanne Staub (played by Hanna Schygulla, the survivor of ten Fassbinder movies, who has put on a lot of weight since the BDR trilogy, but also looks like she has accumulated some wisdom, unwilling to consider it as her daughter in the movie is. ).

The contingencies that are oftentimes labeled “fate” seems to interest Akin in ways very similar to the explorations of Tom Twyker (Run, Lola, Run; Heaven) and Twyker’s idol Krzysztof Kieslowski (Red). Split seconds may have huge consequences in the representations by these directors.

Although relying on strong performances by the six main characters, “Edge of Heaven” is more plot-driven than I’d have guessed. It includes the judicial and caraceral systems of both Germany and Turkey. The location shots are also very interesting (and I’d think so even if I weren’t going to see the Black Sea’s southern coast for myself in a few months).

The nearly hour-long making-of featurette is narrated by Akin, who has interesting things to say about the casting (including twice miscasting the role of Nejat), rehearsals, locations, his family members included onscreen, and winning the best screenplay award at Cannes (Akin also won the European film award for best screenplay and the German Film Awards for writing and directing, but those are not shown). (The Golden Palm went to “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” btw.)

The English-language title makes no sense to me. The characters go to other sides of their personalities as well as between Germany and Turkey (and journeys within each).

Akin’s most recent feature film,”Soul Kitchen” will be out on DVD later this month, btw.

©2010, Stephen O. Murray

4 foshizzlee's foreign film writeoff

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD