Head-On

In St. Pauli, Hamburg, the alcoholic, drugged and hopeless German with Turkish roots Cahit Tomruk (Birol Ünen) lives like a pig in a small dirty apartment and survives collecting empty bottles in the night-club "Der Fabrik". One night, he gives up living, and hits his car against a wall. However, he survives the crash and is sent to a clinic, where he meets Sibel Güner (Sibel Kekilli), a younger German Turk, with suicidal tendencies. Sibel is the younger daughter of a conservative Turkish family, and proposes a fake marriage to Cahit, in order to permit her to leave her family; in return, she would share the rent of the flat, and she would cook and clean the place, and they could have independent lives. Cahit accepts, but while living with Sibel, he falls in love for her, until a tragedy happens.

I saw "Gegen die Wand" yesterday and I am still very impressive with this powerful German movie. It is bitter, sad, heavy, unpleasant – but also an original and very realistic non-Hollywoodian love story. The ___location in St. Pauli, close to the famous Reeperban Street, could not be more perfect as the environment for such depressive story of losers. The precise direction of Faith Akin (obs: IMDb dictionary does not allow to write correctly the name of the director) is stunning, and the performance of Birol Ünen and Sibel Kekilli are outstanding and deserved nominations to the Oscar. When the character Sibel reaches the bottom of the well in Istanbul, Sibel Kekilli shines with a mesmerizing performance. Unfortunately we will never see Hollywood shooting this type of story, which is recommended for very special audiences. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Contra a Parede" ("Against the Wall")

This movie surprised me, because although I had read that it was good, it exceeded my expectations. The characters felt authentic and possessed believable strengths and weaknesses. The actors turned in powerful performances and I find myself, the day after I saw the film, still thinking about the plot but mostly remembering the expressions on the actors' faces.

The movie did seem a little too long, but in trying to think of scenes to cut, I realized that nothing in particular felt superfluous or irrelevant to the storyline or character development.

Finally, I didn't like the end! But that's probably because I've been ruined by Hollywood with its sappy happy endings. This film ended as it should, and probably as it had to.

Head On (Gegen die Wand), winner of the top prize "Golden Bear" at the 2004 Berlin Festival, is occasionally interrupted by a panoramic shot of a singer performing in front of a small Turkish orchestra on the banks of the Bosphorus across from Istanbul. It's a simple, at first incomprehensible, little device that provides punctuation and clarity amid the chaos and melodrama that otherwise dominate this story of a Turkish man in his forties and a twenty-year-old Turkish woman who meet in a psychiatric facility in Germany when both have attempted suicide -- he by crashing his car into a wall ("head on"), she by slitting her wrists. Cahit Tomruk (the sublimely attitudinizing Birol Ünel) is a purposeless rock 'n' roll loving boozer with a dead-end job collecting bottles at a club, and Sibel Güner (the wiry, intense Sibel Kikulli) is a young woman with conservative Turkish parents who wants to escape family pressures.

Both are total drama queens and both are German-born Turks. Cahit is more assimilated; his Turkish isn't even good. Sibel figures if he'll agree to marry her that'll get her away from her family. This is the irony of their situation: she must capitulate to the conventions of their culture in order to gain some freedom from it, and he must capitulate to society in order to get some sense of purpose. So they do get married -- he somehow passes muster with the stuffy family, baulking all the way -- and they eventually even fall in love. Her joie de vivre is exactly what he needs, and she's essentially just as wild in her way as he is in his -- but his nihilism and violence continue unabated and so does her promiscuity, and his brutal attack on one of her one night stands leads to jail and scandal, which in turn forces her to go to Istanbul. While he's incarcerated she writes him sustaining letters from Turkey -- their relationship, like the staid orchestra on the Bosphorus, is a stable element amid the surrounding chaos -- and after jail he goes to Turkey to find her.

To say this turbulent, brightly colored, lurid story is a "realistic picture of Turks in Germany" would be a total distortion of the truth. But somehow the situation of Cahit and Sibel reflects the unstable moods this half assimilated, half alien population experiences, and however melodramatic and unresolved the saga is, the two main characters are very well realized. The actors are strong, especially Birol Ünel, whose charismatic brooding and ravaged good looks make him irresistibly watchable. Both feel real to us -- he sardonic and gloomy, she dangerously spirited and full of life-- despite her dramatic suicide attempts, of which there's more than one. The story, as much as the images through which it's told, is both dark and vibrant.

We need the Brechtian, Greek-chorus device of those orchestral interludes on the Bosphorus, though: without an occasional break the drama and darkness would be too much. We also need to go with the flow of this movie, and not expect it to be more polished or more organized, or even better looking, than it is. It looks unlike most films we're seeing now, but that doesn't mean the cinematographer hasn't done the best possible job. What it has is life, tumultuous with incident, strong personalities, and a milieu we've not seen before. There's also a loud, authentic-feeling rock-pop soundtrack and a cunning contrast between Cahit's punk-rock sensibility and Sibel's love of good grooming and dance. Arguably the movie is too long, but that length gives it the feel of a saga, which it must have, because that's what it is, the confused, tawdry epic of a generation. Like all first films by a whole subculture, it has a lot to talk about. When Sibel and Cahit discover they still love each other, after everything, it's the Turkish Germans discovering that they have self-worth. The last scenes are open-ended: this generation's future is anybody's guess.

Seen in Paris 17 September 2004. Opening in the US in January 2005. First German film to win a Golden Bear in Berlin in eighteen years.

I haven't watched such a great movie for a long time and it is really great to see that this is a Turkish movie. After Nuri Bilge Ceylan's success with Uzak in Cannes Film Festival, Fatih Akin made a very successful move in contributing to Turkish cinema. First of all, the movie explains the life of the Turkish immigrants in Germany in a perfect way. We see how they cannot be neither German nor Turkish anymore. They are stuck in between and they act as punks. For instance, it is really true that most of the young Turkish people in Germany cannot speak Turkish, like Cahit. We also see the ridiculous pressure of Sibel's family: For instance, while her married brother threatens&beats her whenever she has a boyfriend, he and his friends can comfortably speak about how they sleep with prostitutes! Also the cast is very good, especially Sibel Kekilli and Birol Unel. I loved the scene where we can see the smile in Sibel's eyes in the amusement park: she is so much in love... In addition, there are so many things to say about the movie.. The story is a very striking one itself. The hopelessness of the characters in a world without love and moral values are explained so well-without making it dramatic. Also, Sibel's life in Istanbul, her cousin's life-like many of us: still single and waiting to be promoted!- are also judgements beside the main genre. The music is also very nice, with Depeche Mode and also traditional Turkish music. Faith Akin has really made a good job.. The script is excellent and the scenes are all pieces of artwork. I wish the best for him and all the cast and I hope to see movies perfect like this in the future too...

Some people think this movie is about a culture immigrants (German, Turkish) But that is not the emphasis, the emphasis is about how low one can go, where does one hit the bottom, and a love intertwined in such a spiral. A magnificent tragedy, but it doesn't make you feel depressed, it makes you take a big deep breath in and damn and appreciate life at the same time. The actor and actress are magnificent so was the supporting actors. The director doesn't treat the audience as dumb nor as people who have to really think hard to get it. The sequence of events, the transition from scenes are magnificent.

The movie swept every possible film award in Europe and is sweeping rewards in North America and rest of the world. This this is the best foreign movie I've seen. PERIOD (.)