DVD Review: The Edge of Heaven (2007)

TIES THAT BIND, TIES THAT BREAK

Fatih Akin a German director of Turkish origin uses both countries and cultures to weave his devastating tale of six crisscrossing lives in The Edge of Heaven, a powerful human drama about love, loss, passion and hatred. Above all, family ties that bind and drive apart three parent-child pairs. A Turkish father Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) in Germany who's as brash and crude as his literate, handsome son Nejat (Baki Davrak) is sophisticated and gentle. While the father gambles at horse races and visits prostitutes, the soft-spoken son with sensitive green eyes teaches German at the local university, the ultimate distinction for an immigrant's offspring (Turks form the largest ethnic minority in Germany).

The father takes a fancy to a Turkish woman at a brothel and offers to keep her at his house on an exclusive basis. The woman, Yeter (Nursel Kose) agrees, because there are Turkish fanatics who've spotted her at the brothel and threatened to harm her if she continues with her un-Islamic activities. Fate has other plans and as the title card at the opening of the first segment suggests, Yeter will pay with her life for a decision she thinks would actually save her.

While Yeter is confronting her destiny in Germany, her fiery daughter Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay) is on the run in Istanbul for her involvement with a revolutionary group. In desperation, she takes flight to Germany in search of her mother, who she believes, works in a shoe shop. Ayten befriends Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), an idealistic student at a German university who's recently returned from a trip to India, nourishes romantic dreams of a utopian world and quickly falls for Ayten's raw charm. She brings her home to her mother (legendary German actress Hanna Schygulla) who was once a hippie herself, but has since embraced a life of bourgeois comfort and hence doesn't approve of her daughter's devotion to Ayten.

The plot, carefully structured to accentuate the crossing of these peoples' paths, generates its own sense of mystery and foreboding. While the audience is given information on a need-to-know basis, we're still always ahead of the characters themselves, who are so close and yet so unaware of their own existential connections. At one point mother and daughter are driving on the same road without realising it. At another point a mother coldly cuts her daughter off, little knowing she's never going to see her again. As for the father-son duo, even the deepest bonds can snap on account of one rash act as the wise and  saddened Nejat understands through the course of the film.

Each of these characters is worthy of redemption. None of them may actually get what they're looking for. Yet, in their own ways, they're all moving ahead, embracing life, and symbolising a world where people have the opportunity to find love and understanding and compassion in the unlikeliest of places.