ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL Movie Review

Fear Eats the Soul
Angst Essen Selle auf

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a man in a hurry to make the films he wanted to make, having created some 40-odd pictures by the time he died at age 36, reportedly found face down at his editing table and filled with your run-of-the-mill combo of cocaine, vodka, and Valium. An admirer of the tragic American melodramas of Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind, Imitation of Life), it was logical that Fassbinder would be drawn to a tale of star-crossed, interracial romance, and here he's created a love story set in Munich between two holy innocents—a German scrub woman and a Moroccan mechanic. Indeed, as if to prove that he was in a hurry to out-Sirk Sirk, as well as to up the ante and prove that true love knows no boundaries, Fassbinder has made the mechanic a tall, handsome man in his thirties and the floor-washer a short, squat woman in her sixties. Fortunately, this unlikely duo is played by the extraordinary Brigitte Mira and Fassbinder “protégé” El Hedi Ben Salem, who, though he may have gotten the part by other than traditional means (who doesn't?), is nevertheless a spellbinding screen presence; Fassbinder himself is also fascinating in one of the many small but significant roles in which he frequently cast himself. We know from square one that this physically mismatched couple is going to be in for a rough ride from “society,” but then the movie surprises us, taking their marriage to an unexpected conclusion. Fassbinder's deadpan directorial style and smooth, elegant visuals are justly celebrated, but his ability to make material like Ali work ultimately depended on his cast. That so many of his films, Ali included, cast such a powerful spell with such baroque material suggests that it may be as a director of actors that Rainer Werner Fassbinder will ultimately be best remembered.

NEXT STOP … Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, The Merchant of Four Seasons, All That Heaven Allows (1959)

1974 68m/C GE Brigitte Mira, El Hedi Ben Salem, Irm Hermann; D: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; W: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; C: Jurgen Jurges. VHS NYF, FCT