Director/writer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Photography: Jurgen Jurges
Music: unspecified Arabic
Editor: Thea Eymesz
Cast: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Katharina Herberg, Irm Hermann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Walter Sedlmayr, Wolfgang Hess
I'm not the most dedicated fan of German director and writer Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982 before he was even 40, but I have seen a lot of the movies he made in a prodigious if short-lived career. I associate him more with Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Marriage of Maria Braun, so I was surprised to find this one at the top of his films on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?—#144 in the latest iteration, with Berlin Alexanderplatz next down at #327. I didn't even get a look at Ali: Fear Eats the Soul until 10 or 15 years ago and at that time its story of hostility toward Arab immigrants in West Germany struck me as way off-brand for Fassbinder, an extreme student of director Douglas Sirk, and the movie just too dreary.
But it hits a little differently in this era where immigrants are so widely reviled and blamed for all problems once again. Obviously this is a continuing theme through history and arguably the US is a nation of immigrants. The problem may or may not be worse here, but it is certainly more comically hypocritical. In my second look at Ali, in the midst of our present-day intense hysteria about immigrants (the whole "border crisis" which is just Benghazi 2.0 a political stunt), I still found the story hard to believe in many ways, but its didactic points about intolerance are put over convincingly, along with tremendous performances from the main players, Brigitte Mira as Emmi and El Hedi ben Salem as Ali.
I'm not the most dedicated fan of German director and writer Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982 before he was even 40, but I have seen a lot of the movies he made in a prodigious if short-lived career. I associate him more with Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Marriage of Maria Braun, so I was surprised to find this one at the top of his films on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?—#144 in the latest iteration, with Berlin Alexanderplatz next down at #327. I didn't even get a look at Ali: Fear Eats the Soul until 10 or 15 years ago and at that time its story of hostility toward Arab immigrants in West Germany struck me as way off-brand for Fassbinder, an extreme student of director Douglas Sirk, and the movie just too dreary.
But it hits a little differently in this era where immigrants are so widely reviled and blamed for all problems once again. Obviously this is a continuing theme through history and arguably the US is a nation of immigrants. The problem may or may not be worse here, but it is certainly more comically hypocritical. In my second look at Ali, in the midst of our present-day intense hysteria about immigrants (the whole "border crisis" which is just Benghazi 2.0 a political stunt), I still found the story hard to believe in many ways, but its didactic points about intolerance are put over convincingly, along with tremendous performances from the main players, Brigitte Mira as Emmi and El Hedi ben Salem as Ali.
Emmi is 50something, a widow who works as a cleaning-woman and has three grown children. She stops at a bar one night to wait for a break in the rain. It's a strange and glamorous bar, perhaps the most characteristically Fassbinder aspect of this picture, with gorgeous sullen barmaids serving "foreigners" so-called. These foreigners are immigrants from the Middle East, mostly Arabs, who came to Germany for work. Ali is from Morocco. They are not accepted by Germans except as a necessary evil. They are routinely "othered" as dirty and smelly and in other familiar ways.
We learn Emmi is Polish and came to Germany originally with her husband as immigrants themselves, during Nazi times, when Poles were as hated then as much as Arab "foreigners" are in the present time of this movie, the '70s (and still, at least from reports). So she has some natural sympathy for the immigrant situation, but really, as presented, she seems more like someone merely with a simple and good heart who can't even conceive such hatred, though eventually she sees it infect all her friends and coworkers and even her own children.
Ali, for his part, seems as simple and straightforward as Emmi. They seem to sincerely like one another, and the players have some stiff chemistry too, so it's easy to take their burgeoning romance as given. But Ali is more like 30something, barely, and his life is materially better with Emmi as a practical matter. He is sharing a small apartment with five other men when he meets her. If nothing else, moving in with Emmi gives him more privacy and room for himself.
We never see any examples of Ali's intentional deceit, even when he goes off the ranch for a time and misbehaves. But deceit is never completely eliminated as his motive either. He might be taking advantage of Emmi. It's the racialized Harold-and-Maude unlikeliness of the relationship that keeps us off balance. Emmi has a good heart but is not really attractive in any way, and meanwhile those glamorous Fassbinder barmaids are pining for Ali back at the bar.
But the picture basically operates on the principles of a romance—boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back—which ultimately provides a welcome note of optimism, because it feels not only like the whole world is against Emmi and Ali (one more trope of romance), but that the whole world is still utterly opposed to such a match at the end. If Ali: Fear Eats the Soul has the structure of a romance, the details of immigrant relations with native citizens are more naturalistic, gritty and raw. Everyone turns on Emmi as her relationship with Ali progresses. Her children snarl and walk out on her when she reveals the love affair to them.
One of my favorite details about Emmi's innocence is when she takes Ali out to eat on a special occasion. She chooses a restaurant that she tells Ali was a favorite of Hitler's. I love that sense of Hitler still being in living memory and Emmi's evident innocence of Hitler's monstrousness. Well, she knows the Nazis and Hitler were bad people, but it was interesting how she accommodated the history into her sense of the better restaurants and the way to show Ali a good time. It also sets up a scene with a waiter who is also likely hateful—the movie is full of wonderful examples of what we now call microaggressions.
And for whatever it might matter, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul felt more like a recognizable Fassbinder picture to me this time too, a really well-conceived and sensitive one. Fassbinder himself takes a cameo as one of the picture's most virulent haters and he and his droopy mustache are quite terrifying. I still think this is a strange place to start with Fassbinder, but Berlin Alexanderplatz is way too long and strange for that either. Other options, according to TSPDT: In a Year With 13 Moons (#466), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (#569), The Marriage of Maria Braun (#671), Veronika Voss (#857). I still plump for The Marriage of Maria Braun, but I should really take another look at it. World on a Wire is really great too, but now I'm getting random.
We learn Emmi is Polish and came to Germany originally with her husband as immigrants themselves, during Nazi times, when Poles were as hated then as much as Arab "foreigners" are in the present time of this movie, the '70s (and still, at least from reports). So she has some natural sympathy for the immigrant situation, but really, as presented, she seems more like someone merely with a simple and good heart who can't even conceive such hatred, though eventually she sees it infect all her friends and coworkers and even her own children.
Ali, for his part, seems as simple and straightforward as Emmi. They seem to sincerely like one another, and the players have some stiff chemistry too, so it's easy to take their burgeoning romance as given. But Ali is more like 30something, barely, and his life is materially better with Emmi as a practical matter. He is sharing a small apartment with five other men when he meets her. If nothing else, moving in with Emmi gives him more privacy and room for himself.
We never see any examples of Ali's intentional deceit, even when he goes off the ranch for a time and misbehaves. But deceit is never completely eliminated as his motive either. He might be taking advantage of Emmi. It's the racialized Harold-and-Maude unlikeliness of the relationship that keeps us off balance. Emmi has a good heart but is not really attractive in any way, and meanwhile those glamorous Fassbinder barmaids are pining for Ali back at the bar.
But the picture basically operates on the principles of a romance—boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back—which ultimately provides a welcome note of optimism, because it feels not only like the whole world is against Emmi and Ali (one more trope of romance), but that the whole world is still utterly opposed to such a match at the end. If Ali: Fear Eats the Soul has the structure of a romance, the details of immigrant relations with native citizens are more naturalistic, gritty and raw. Everyone turns on Emmi as her relationship with Ali progresses. Her children snarl and walk out on her when she reveals the love affair to them.
One of my favorite details about Emmi's innocence is when she takes Ali out to eat on a special occasion. She chooses a restaurant that she tells Ali was a favorite of Hitler's. I love that sense of Hitler still being in living memory and Emmi's evident innocence of Hitler's monstrousness. Well, she knows the Nazis and Hitler were bad people, but it was interesting how she accommodated the history into her sense of the better restaurants and the way to show Ali a good time. It also sets up a scene with a waiter who is also likely hateful—the movie is full of wonderful examples of what we now call microaggressions.
And for whatever it might matter, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul felt more like a recognizable Fassbinder picture to me this time too, a really well-conceived and sensitive one. Fassbinder himself takes a cameo as one of the picture's most virulent haters and he and his droopy mustache are quite terrifying. I still think this is a strange place to start with Fassbinder, but Berlin Alexanderplatz is way too long and strange for that either. Other options, according to TSPDT: In a Year With 13 Moons (#466), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (#569), The Marriage of Maria Braun (#671), Veronika Voss (#857). I still plump for The Marriage of Maria Braun, but I should really take another look at it. World on a Wire is really great too, but now I'm getting random.
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