The Edge of Heaven (2007)

The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007)

Fatih Akin's middle entry to a still unfinished trilogy (which started with Head-on (2004)) is structured like the ambitious and curiously much-lauded Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) and Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006). It details the intertwining tales of several German and Turkish men and women, connected either by the countries that gave life to them or adopted them or bits of coincidences. What differentiates The Edge of Heaven to Haggis or Inarritu's sprawling mini-epics of mankind's chronic inability to live with each other, is that Akin values intimacy and control; that the more you widen your canvass, the more it would invite implausibility and lapses at logic (although the film had one: the whole sideplot about the police man's gun seemed illogical; why did the activists need that gun? is it really that special?).

The Edge of Heaven is set both in Germany and Turkey, and delightfully wafts through the incorporeal political and cultural lines that both connect and separate both nations. Set at a time when Turkey is on the verge of joining the European Union, Akin's film brandishes a critical look at the impossibility of uniting Turkey, a schizophrenic country belonging to both Asia and Europe, with the union. Akin only scrapes the surface of that very political issue; he would focus more on the pertinent lives of these characters spirited away from their homelands, confusing themselves with labels such as "a Turkish professor of German language teaching in German university." The overall grasp of Akin's milieu encompasses a wide range of political and cultural undertones, but his intention is much narrower, thus eliminating the mistakes Inarrittu did in Babel.

The producer of the film (who arrived for a very flacid Q & A) tells us that The Edge of Heaven is about death, while Head-on is about love (the third film of the trilogy is yet to be written). I agree. Other than the obvious (the film is divided into three chapters namely Yeter's Death, Lotte's Death and The Edge of Heaven), the film subtly dissects the destructive and redemptory powers of death. The film starts with Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz), a Turkish immigrant in Bremen who lives off his pension, getting enamored with Yeter (Nursel Koese), a Turkish prostitute. Ali invites Yeter to live with him and his son Nejat (Baki Davrak), who then becomes eager to help Yeter locate her missing daughter Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), a political activist in Turkey.

The death of Yeter would be the impetus for redemption and reconciliation, forcing Nejat to go back to Turkey to locate Ayten (who, in what seems to be a Kieslowskian coincidence, happens to be in Germany locating her mother while getting romantically close with Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska)). The series of mix-ups would lead you to believe that Akin is opting for ease and melodrama, yet instead, he paints a vaster canvass --- teasing his audience with the possibility of reuniting mother and daughter, or father and son, but instead leaves us hanging with open-ended conclusions of what could happen.

That final image, a picturesque static shot of Nejat waiting for his father to come back from fishing, is a testament to endurance and patience; that reconciliation isn't as easy as one-minute embraces and convoluted conversations; that the wounds and scars of the past can only be healed, not by momentary changes of heart, but by a mixture of life-altering events (Lotte's death and her mother's arrival in Turkey) and the passage of time. We do not see the father and the son meet again or even get knowledge of redemption and forgiveness, but we do know that the wounds have closed and everything is as calm and predictable as the waves meeting the sand.

The Lives of Others (2006)

The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
German Title: Das Leben der Anderen

The critics of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's very successful first film The Lives of Others attack it for its historical inaccuracy or the sparseness of truthfulness behind the facts that envelope the entire film. This surprise Oscar winner (beating out Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006)) tells the story of a member of East Germany's Secret Police (the feared Stasi) who becomes tasked to spy on a poet who is suspected of adhering to Western ideals. Glaring for most purist historians is how von Donnersmarck marks the film with humanist pathos for the privacy-interfering Stasi, to the point of plotting out a steady path to redemption.

In interviews, Von Donnersmarck defends his films' historical accuracy or possibility by citing out several examples of Stasi who reneged on their sleazy governmental duties. At times, I question the wisdom in defending his film through factual chronicles. Is the film's downfall its inability to grasp the realities of our world's past? Is Von Donnersmarck's intention to cleanse these mini-atrocities of Communist Germany by providing a shining example of the possibility for righteousness in a society dictated by bureaucratic crab mentality? I disagree. Above all, I thought The Lives of Others is a humanist masterpiece. It is a film wherein intrinsic goodness triumphs over the fragility of the human soul. I cannot find fault in that; not in these trying times wherein a film's quality is measured by its negativity and how accurately it portrays humanity's moral downfall.

The heart of the film is certainly Ulrich Mühe's portrayal of Captain Gerd Wiesler, the Stasi agent who we initially see as stoic and sure in his duties, unwavering in the inhumanity of his interrogation techniques, morally unaffected in imparting his methods' efficiencies to young students. Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a successful poet, has become the target of a high-ranking official who fancies Dreyman's beautiful girlfriend and muse, stage actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Wiesler's surveillance expertise is recruited to find anything incriminating about Dreyman.

Wiesler's canvass is Dreyman's pad --- a constant meeting place for anti-Communist artists, and a love nest for Dreyman and Sieland. Wiesler's studio is the pad's darkened attic --- a pathetic setting characterized by his instruments for his trade (a bevy of surveillance equipment which is wired to each and every spot in Dreyman's pad), and at times a companion for a few minutes, his night shift replacement. Wiesler's nights aren't any different from his solitary stay above Dreyman's pad. He goes home, makes dinner for himself, at times, hires a government-sponsored prostitute who serves him properly given that he pays right and schedules an appointment. It's a routine he has learned to live with, but in a sudden burst of humanity, opts to reject; against the promises of a lucrative career within the mechanical bureaucracy.

The film's success hinges on the plausibility of Wiesler's turnabout. I thought the turnabout was satisfyingly gradual --- visually presented and paced well enough to evoke judicious amounts of pathos and vulnerability for the subject character. Von Donnersmarck aptly and gorgeously creates an atmosphere of deadened loneliness and futility against the palpable warmth of true affections and the even more engaging and rousing prospect of rebellion and freedom. It is that interconnection of Wiesler's drab and lifeless world with the one Dreyman is living in that forces Wiesler to re-think --- is his life's worth measured by what he has been tasked to do by his bureaucratic masters, or is there something more? That interconnection, although one way as it is effected through less than desirous means of discreetly invading on other people's businesses, becomes that spark that will consume him enough to change him.

The film ends rather beautifully, without the usual grandeur or narrative excesses of contemporary cinema. Wiesler, years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, chances upon the newly-released book by his former surveillance subject. He opens the book and sees a lovely surprise --- finally, he is complete and has been acknowledged. He is no longer that lonely man quietly peering and listening in a darkened attic; he has become a part of the life of another.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926)
German Title: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed

It's quite funny actually how today's animators and their crew of thousands of techno-wizards spend months and millions of dollars just to perfect the movement of each individual hair strand of an animated character. The animated films being made today have forgotten the reason why they are animated and not live action; the animation facilitates the burst of the imagination. By giving so much away, you take away room for participation, interpretation, or even creation from the viewers. Nowadays, watching those CGI-flicks (wherein everything looks so perfect and beautiful, you suddenly get the urge of doubting whether your movie date is real) have become mere perfunctory tasks, with you just sitting in that darkened room with your skull pre-emptied for a dose of glossy visuals, bombastic sound effects and a lot of fart jokes.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving feature length animated film. Made by Lotte Reiniger (with the help of husband Carl Koch, who did the photography in most of her films) in 1926, the film made use of shadow puppets (very complex, multi-jointed puppets) to create an intoxicating and always engrossing tale based from the Arabian Nights. The puppets themselves are very lovely. Made from cardboard cut-outs, there's a painstaking detailry that impressed me. The elaborate dress worn by the princess Dinarsade, or the delicate strands of hairs or tiny fingers are all intricately crafted. The workmanship here is tremendously beautiful, from the individual puppets, to the simple yet evocative backdrops.

There's always that sense of magic that pervades while watching the film. Beginning from the curious conjurations of the African wizard wherein hideous shapes form from blurry smokes, there's already an attention-grabbing awe that is at once established. Reiniger continues to astound with her next set-up: the birthday of the caliph, with dozens of entertainers, trumpet-players and where we first get to see the exquisite beauty of the princess, and the heroic posture of Prince Achmed.

Set-up after set-up, Reiniger never seems to run out of creative juices. She mixes adventurism with a tinge of eroticism when Achmed first lands in the fairy land of Wak-Wak. Dashing Achmed finds a harem full of lustful female attendants, all of them wanting a taste from probably the first male human being they've seen in their entire lives. It's something I thought was ahead of its time --- it's a naughty, undeniably funny scene only topped by the next set-up. Achmed lands in a nearby island where he witnesses the fairy princess Pari Banu bathing with her other female companions. There's a thrilling sense of voyeurism (despite the fact that all we see are shadows of what I imagine is a perfectly beautiful female form), of repressed testosterone and other hormones boiling to unbearable levels. Once Pari Banu sees Achmed viewing her from underneath tropical plants, the voyeurist mood turns into something more playful; a lively chase between a hapless lover and his enchanter, evolving into a lovely romantic interlude amidst the graceful slopes of Chinese mountains.

And quite predictably, it gets better. Pari Banu gets spirited away by the African magician, who masters the art of transfiguration. A good (yet surprisingly un-beautified) witch introduces herself as the magician's arch-enemy, aiding the good guys along the way. Action scenes as tense and as marvelous as any done by Rudolph Valentino are staged with precision. Otherworldly monsters make appearances and are defeated with eye-popping gusto. Seriously, unbelievable as it may seem, these puppets do make quite brilliant heroes; Achmed jumps, swings his cutlass, and shoots arrows with intense fervor. Moreover, there's a magic duel between the wizard and the witch that is just so good, my meager description fails to do justice: it's a battle of transforming magic experts --- every moment they transfigure into an animal or an abomination of nature, each transformation more tremendous than before.

Then there's that final battle, which makes the huge, larger-than-life battles of George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and Ridley Scott pale in creativity. The jealous demons of Wak-Wak versus the good guys, with the help of nebulous white good spirits. Those thinking that since Reiniger's animation method is mere shadow puppetry, thus limited and flat, would be overwhelmed because the presumption is simply untrue. In that final showdown between the forces of good and evil, while the heroes are fighting it out to save the fairy princess from a monstrosity, the background is kept busy by hordes of demons and good spirits in tumultuous battle.

Of course, the experience of viewing The Adventures of Prince Achmed can only be as rich and fulfilling as one's ability and openness to imagine. In my case, each lovely movement by a puppet is enunciated by me imagining the more specific gestures (the facial expressions, that sorrowful tear of despair by Aladdin when his magic palace and his love is snatched in the course of one night). Reiniger merely transports me to that fantastic land of caliphs, demons, witches and fairies with her marvelous artistry and craftsmanship. Especially with the moving and rousing score specifically composed by Wolfgang Zeller for the film, my experience in viewing this stunning work is what I can vividly describe as the complete cinematic experience --- wherein just enough is contributed by the filmmaker to rouse each viewer's ability to visualize fantastic worlds and tense and daring moments. Hopefully, humanity hasn't lost that ability.

Goodbye Lenin! (2003)

Goodbye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003)

After being left by her husband in favor of a more lucrative life in West Germany, Christiane (Katrin Sass) has decided to spend her life raising her two children properly and loyally serving socialist East Germany as a teacher. When her children grew up to become adults, nothing much has changed except that the unification of the two Germanys are coming close. Of course, the characters in the film do not know that, and when Christiane suffers a heart attack followed by an 8-month coma which is conveniently timed during the breaking of the Berlin Wall, the two children decide to keep the unification a secret from their mother who awakens without knowledge of the quick events that happened during the time she was unconscious.

It's an ingenious concept, I thought. A concept that is not entirely free from ridiculous inconsistencies, but in the end, is truly compelling. The democratic world saw the unification of Germany as the triumph of capitalism, but the inconvenient truth of a forcedly forgotten idealism towards socialism remains in the heart of former East Germans. Goodbye Lenin! seeks to visualize the hidden emotional impact of the unification by cooking up a comedic farce that is both emotionally deep and touching.

Wolfgang Becker directs the concept with able hands. Although there is a needless reliance to tired comedy, Becker still succeeds in creating a humorous attack to the historical event that this democratic world has considered a triumph. One scene that is charmingly funny yet also heartaching is when Christiane finally goes out from her room to discover a neighborhood that has changed since the time she suffered from coma. Katrin Sass walks weakly down her apartment, her face stoic from the lies that her children has supplied her ego, but is also unable to understand the presence of West Germans in her neighborhood, capitalist signs, and in one brilliant stroke of visual humor, a helicopter flying carrying the enormous bust of Lenin. But Becker doesn't direct the scene with humor in mind. He supplies the scene with a heartracing soundtrack that accompanies the resulting internal disagreement of the lies of the children and the mother's own reconciling of what she sees, and the effect is quite astounding.

Then Becker makes a huge cinematic mistake. He decides that the lie should go on, covering the amazing scene with another lie the son cooks up. I thought the brilliantly directed scene went down as an annoying emotional tease. I was expecting a difficult reckoning for the mother --- an uncovering of the life and the hard hitting fact that everything she lived for has turned into nothing when capitalism has ruled over socialism. Instead, Becker introduces more melodramatic elements into his film including a touching but not too original reunification of children and father, and so on. Sure, Becker, by following more commercial instincts, has made a more friendly film --- one that doesn't disagree with conventional wisdom of what is pleasant and acceptable. But upon deciding that, he forego what could've been truly impressive and devastating --- a mother breaking down from the treachery (although probably reasonable and rational) of the two most important parts of her life.

Requiem (2006)

Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid, 2006)

Hans-Christian Schmid's Requiem is the second film made based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a student who died after an exorcism in Germany. The first one is The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Scott Derrickson, 2005), the horror film from last year which used the trial court proceedings against the exorcising priest as a frame to narrate the otherworldly events that transpired. Requiem is more simply told. It doesn't rely on flashy narrative techniques, or even special effects, but instead centers on the psychological complexity of the girl in question. Despite its austere filmmaking methods, Requiem remains to be more engaging than the creepy exorcism film.

Schmid films the events that transpire as it is. In fact, the notion that the film was based on the same true story that inspire The Exorcism of Emily Rose did not dawn on me until the middle, where the similarities start to surface. Almost documentary-like in his visual style, the film achieves an arresting sense of realism which separates it from the horror film that preceded it. Requiem's goal is certainly not to sensationalize the Catholic tradition of exorcism, or to put into scientific perspective demonic possession. Instead, Schmid becomes more interested in the psychological make-up of the personality who is possessed. Schmid is successful in burrowing through the possessed's history. In a way, the film serves as a convincing case study of possession: primarily pinpointing a specific familial structure and devout Catholic upbringing as root causes for the girl's psychological demise.

In the middle of the film's success is Sandra Hüller who takes on the role of Michaela Klinger, the education student who suffers bouts of epilepsy, hears imaginary voices, and finally implodes into a psychiatric mess. Her performance is not at all showy and does not attribute to typical and cliche ideas of possession. Whenever she twists and turns in pain, there is nothing supernatural about it. Whenever she starts addressing religious symbols or disrespects her mother, it all feels very natural and well-deserved. With the help of Schmid's careful and meticulously objective direction, and her other co-actors and actresses, Hüller completes a picture of the woman which the filmmakers in The Exorcism of Emily Rose merely touched the surface on.

Schmid resists every bit of temptation to turn Requiem into anything like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Catholic symbols and ceremonies (Michaela idolizes a saint, up to the end) are a constant visual sight in the film, but that is the closest Schmid does to sensationalize Catholic belief. The Catholic imagery is merely one of the many facets that constitute the complexity of Michaela's person. Other facets include Michaela's closeness to her father and cold distance to her mother, her overly trusting nature, and many more. In the end, Schmid makes the more fascinating film with probably less than half of the budget. Requiem however is not merely good compared to the American horror film. It is a good film, period. It features an impressive performance from the female lead, and equally impressive performances from the supporting cast. Schmid's filmmaking (the other Schmid film I saw Distant Lights (2003) is an equally interesting take on immigration) is consistent throughout the entire film, and doesn't try to achieve more than what he intends to do.