Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974)

[madali]

Ali: Eat Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

I don't like it when a movie tries to tell me something by standing right in front of me, grabbing my collars, and screaming it in my face, spit hitting against my glass, until all that remains of the message is a wet glass and painful ears drums.

"Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" is exactly like that. It is the 70s in Germany and widow in her 60s starts a relationship with a 40-something year Arab. Both are lonely and both are poor, she being a cleaning lady and he being a mechanic. But the couple faces society's critical eye because of the age difference and specially because Ali is a foreigner.

And that's where the message is screamed in my face. EVERYONE in the movie hates the situation in an exaggerated way. Her neighbors insult and shun her, her coworkers insult and shun her, the grocery guy doesn't serve her husband and insults her behind her back. When she goes to a café, all the staff stand rudely watching them, without saying anything. In another scene, they go an expensive restaurant, and the waiter also stands and rudely stares at the them. When she tells her children, they don't just feel disappointed, but they react aggressively. One of the sons kicks the TV in and breaks it. The others call her a whore, call her home a pig sty, and tell her that she doesn't have children anymore.

All this, and add bad acting to it too, specially from Ali, which shouldn't be a surprise because Ali was the gay lover of the director, who probably made this movie as how he felt the world reacted to his homosexual relationship with an Arab.

3/5

[ozzylogic]

Isn't it Fear Eats The Soul?

[madali]

It is. Thanks

[X.]

Fassbinder was a huge Douglas Sirk fan and essentially made melodramas. ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL is a melodrama, which explains the sentimentality, though this should not be confused with a lack of sophistication.

[madali]

Well, that explains it. Didn't like Sirk's Written on the Wind either.

[X.]

Not a Douglas Sirk fan myself. Try Fassbinder's MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN. It's brutal.

[madali]

Pleaaaaase dont recommend me anything, AK. I have 600+ movies in a mixture of hard drive and actual disks, and I can't imagine how I'll be able to finish through them.