Ali - Fear Eats the Soul - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anita Bucher, Hark Bohm, Marquard Bohm, Peter Gauhe, Rudolf Waldemar BremBrand: Image Entertainment
Primary Contributor: El Hedi ben Salem
Primary Contributor: Brigitte Mira
Primary Contributor: Valentin, Barbara
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Ali - Fear Eats the Soul - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Love is Blind
Summary: 5 Stars
German Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this sweet and sad film about an older woman who falls in love with a much younger man. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is loosely based on Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. Unlike All That Heaven Allows, which features a mature but strikingly beautiful not-much-older woman in Jane Wyman, Brigitte Mira, who plays the MUCH older German housecleaner--in Ali: Fear Eats the soul--gives new meaning to the phrase "robbing the cradle." Her love interest, El Hedi ben Salem, is Ali, a Moroccan guest worker and auto mechanic. Intensifying their age discrepancy is race: Brigitte Mira's character is white and El Hedi ben Salem's character is black. That she and her late husband belonged to the Nazi Party further intensify their unlikely affair.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul begins as an old woman enters a bar. Outside, it's dark and wet; inside the bar, it's warm and dry. The tables in the bar are empty; a few patrons clustered at the bar--including the bartender, a tall, voluptuous, blonde--greet the old woman with hard cold stares. Besides the white bartender, the people clustered at the bar are black. Their strong looks ridicule and isolate the old woman--she becomes self-conscious and feels old and out of her place. As a joke, one of the women at the bar dares one of the men, the most attractive man, to dance with the old woman. That young man, Ali, approaches the old woman. He buys her a drink and they dance. The young women at the bar look in envy upon the slow-dancing couple, the young black man and the old white woman. They are very comfortable in each other's arms. He walks her home. She lives in an old apartment building. It's very late and it's still raining. She invites the young black man in for a moment, for a drink, and to dry himself a little. They talk. He asks her what she does for a living. She's embarrassed. Reluctantly she tells him that she's a cleaning woman. He seems impressed. She opens up to him. She's lonely. She has children in town but she only sees them on holidays. All of his family is back in Morocco.
After a drink and a small--but warm--conversation, the young black man prepares to leave. He lives on the other side of town where he shares a small room with five other men. The old woman invites him to stay at her home in her guestroom. He could leave in the morning when it's dry. Sometime in the night, the black man becomes restless. He knocks on the old woman's bedroom door, and she allows him inside. Thus, begins their unlikely--bittersweet--relationship.
This is a sweet, understated, and beautiful film. There are no bad police--a la Spike Lee, no Hiroshimas, and no confrontations with the Klan. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul shows the unseen side of racism by juxtaposing the outward emotions of the interracial couple. The white woman freely expresses her torn feelings at being isolated by her own kind; on the other hand, her young black husband is stoic and seems unconcerned with and unaffected by the racial hostilities directed at he and his wife. Through this couple is shown the safety of emotional expression against the danger of emotional repression and indifference, hence the film's sad soft conclusion. Fear, anger, pain--all these does eat the soul. This is a beautiful film.
Author of Gotta Be Down!
Summary of Ali - Fear Eats the Soul - Criterion Collection
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, already the director of almost twenty films by the age of 29, paid homage to his cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk, with this updated version of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. Lonely widow Emmi Kurowsky (Brigitte Mira) meets Arab worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. To their own surprise (and to the shock of family, colleagues, and drinking buddies) they fall in love. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen seele auf), Fassbinder expertly uses the emotional power of the melodrama to underscore the racial tensions threatening German culture.Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid tribute to his mentor, Douglas Sirk, with this loose adaptation of All That Heaven Allows, the classic American soaper of a widow falling for younger man to the disapproval of family and friends. Fassbinder combines the Sirk melodrama with the story told in his own The American Soldier. An aging, lonely charwoman (sweet old Brigitte Mira) befriends a Moroccan guest worker (El Hedi ben Salem) at least 20 years her junior. Finding comfort and happiness in one another's company, they suddenly marry. Her kids are aghast, his friends appalled, and the neighborhood turns its back, so the two pull together for support. Their relationship ironically begins to unravel when the pressure of community prejudice eases and they must confront the gulf between them. Combining melodrama with social commentary, Fassbinder offers a sharp, incisive portrait of prejudice in modern Germany grounded in contemporary social conditions. Mira delivers a tender, vulnerable performance and Fassbinder molds Salem's stiffness into a distinctive character trait of a man ill at ease in German society. It's an assured and beautiful film, full of gliding camerawork and evocative images, and invested with intimacy and gentleness. Even Fassbinder's characteristically grim conclusion defies tragedy for a glimmer of hope, a welcome and affecting rarity in his career. --Sean Axmaker
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