The Edge of Heaven, screening at the Northwest Film Center this Saturday, June 5, at 7pm.
Turkish-German director Fatih Akin (whose earlier film, Head-On, is also excellent) makes movies about immigration, alienation and the human struggle to behave decently in bleak, hostile surroundings. Which sounds like it might be a lot of hard work, the kind of Important Film that's too serious to be any fun. Not so, however. Akin's stories are political, yes, but they're also full of energy, mystery, adrenaline, erotic tension and complicated romance. In The Edge of Heaven, Nejat (Baki Davrak), a Turkish immigrant living and teaching in Germany, gets involved in the life of a Turkish prostitute his father (Tuncel Kurtiz, of Somersaults in a Coffin) brings home. When an ugly fate befalls the prostitute, Nejat goes searching for her daughter, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay), hoping if he can find and help her it will partly make up for what happened. Ayten, it turns out, could really use some help; she's involved in a subversive political movement in Turkey and is about to find herself in serious trouble. The plot turns on missed connections and futile gestures, the kind of ships-passing-in-the-night stuff that can be ultra-gimmicky but here feels subdued and fairly natural. And the lack of a tidy resolution reinforces the notion that the important thing isn't whether these particular lost souls meet but that we nurture the broader instinct to try and make connections at all. B+