Sunday, September 07, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews

Twists and turns

Edgy ‘Heaven’ a rewarding journey

BY STEVE WARREN

“The Edge of Heaven” unfolds like a novel—but with better scenery—and is just as hard to put down, in either sense of the phrase. The film follows six people—two mothers and their daughters, a father and his son—whose lives connect (or not) on a long and winding road that goes back and forth between Germany and Turkey. Writer-director Fatih Akin has been down that road before (“Head-On,” “In July”), and the trip gets smoother each time.

The most surprising thing about “The Edge of Heaven” is how surprising it manages to be when it provides its own spoilers. The film’s first two segments start by announcing the deaths of characters who haven’t been introduced yet, but that hardly makes the deaths less shocking when they occur. As the characters’ paths sometimes criss without crossing, the viewer becomes privy to connections between them that they may never be aware of. It’s subtle, but makes for great drama.

Nejat Aksu (Baki Davrak) is a Turk who teaches German at the University of Hamburg (could he be more assimilated)? His father, Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz), who virtually raised him alone, starts frequenting a Turkish prostitute, Yeter Ozturk (Nursel Kose), and asks her to move in with him. Pressured by Turkish thugs to get out of the business, she agrees.

Yeter has a grown daughter in Istanbul she hasn’t heard from in some time. Eventually, Nejat will go to Istanbul to look for her, buy a German-language bookshop and settle in. The viewer meets the daughter, Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), before Nejat does (if he ever does). She’s involved with a gang of radicals and, narrowly avoiding arrest, splits for Hamburg on a false passport.

Begging for money on campus, Ayten gets lucky when she meets Lotte Staub (Patrycia Ziolkowska), who offers her a place to stay over the objections of her mother, Susanne (the legendary Hanna Schygulla, star of many a Fassbinder film and as radiant as ever), with whom she lives.

Soon, Ayten and Lotte are lovers, but their happiness is short-lived. Ayten claims political asylum in Germany, but with Turkey joining the European Union, her appeal is denied and she winds up in a Turkish prison. Lotte goes to Istanbul to help her, but the wheel of fate has a few spins to go.

Instead of groaning as each coincidence occurs, you’ll find yourself rooting for the one that might happen next. There’s a lot of tragedy in “The Edge of Heaven,” but overall Akin is very optimistic about humanity in general (not all the angels are in Heaven), however rough he may be on some individuals. Faster than real life but slower than a summer blockbuster, “The Edge of Heaven” is a journey to be savored, one step at a time. 3 STARS