According to Roger Ebert, El Hedi ben Salem, committed suicide in prison in 1982. He stabbed three people in a German nightspot and apparently later told Rainer Werner Fassbinder that he didn't need to be afraid anymore. Watching 'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,' that statement strikes me as being very interesting and very thought provoking.
There are many great moments, but one which stands out for me is when Emmi and Ali sit alone at a table at an outdoors restaurant. They are surrounded by a sea of empty tables, isolated and alone except for each other. It is hard to miss the symbolism here and I'm sure there are some who would believe that Fassbinder was laying it on a bit thick. I'm not one of those people. To reinforce the loneliness of their situation, the camera pans back to the restaurant. The workers are all standing, huddled together and staring in a mixture of disbelief and horror at the couple. Emmi, long on the verge of a breakdown, begins to cry, curse them, yell at them; Ali comforts her quietly and takes her hands in his own.
'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul' is the story of a 60 year old German woman who falls in love and marries a 40 year old Moroccan. How they act with each other and are reacted to by German society is the larger scope of the film. The pairing can represent a number of things: 1) Ageism: Emmi's adult children find not only the unimagined libido of their mother distasteful, they find her choice of partner sickening as well. 2) Inter-racial marriage: Though German, Emmi was regarded suspiciously for having once been married to a Polish man. At least, the film implies, he was white. Ali is described with every imaginable hate-filled epithet and Emmi is named 'whore' and every synonym for it. 3) Gay marriage: Fassbinder and El Hedi Ben Salem were lovers. It isn't much of a stretch to substitute two gay men for an old woman and a Moroccan. Would the reaction be any different in the vast majority of countries around the world?
One of the film's best sequences is the opening. Emmi is trying to avoid the rain so she seeks shelter in a bar haunted almost exclusively by Arab men. Beautiful camera work and menace as the shot comes from their eyeline (standing in a cluster at the far end of the bar) to her eyeline (sitting -- cowering even -- at a table as far away as possible). This idea of xenophobia is established in the opening reel of the film. "Ali," as he introduces himself to her is not even his real name. He explains that Germans don't have the patience or energy to use his full name (El Hedi ben Salem M'Barek Mohammed Mustapha) and so give him a generic name that is used for all Arab men: Ali.
I find the notion of Xenophobia interesting. Fassbinder suggests that society needs or uses xenophobia as a source of power. Inclusion and exclusion are how each strata of society empowers itself. The working class is here empowered by excluding non-native Germans. We learn that Arab men tend to end up in the hospital every six months with perforated ulcers. "But why?" asks Emmi. "The stress," answers the doctor. "We patch them up but they'll be back in six months with another."
I'm not a speaker of German so I had to rely on the sub-titles. I thought it was very interesting translation though. Emmi is given perfect syntax. Ali's phrases are often clipped and simplistic. His ideas are complex "Fear eats the soul," but his expression of them are not. A good idea of Fassbinder's to exaggerate the difficulties for Ali to integrate -- his attempt to purchase 'Libelle,' a new kind of margarine, from an ignorant and racist storekeeper is very effective.
The interesting switch that the film uses with this notion of exclusion is that while terrible, it may pass. It doesn't go away, but it does have transference. Ali and Emmi want to escape it for a while so they go on vacation. When they come back, the ignorant shop keeper now wants their business (money talks and the supermarket down the street is killing him). The neighbors who had once demanded Emmi sweep the stairs more frequently (Ali is constantly sneered at as being "one of those dirty Arabs") is now courted at for her large storage closet in the basement. Her co-workers once ostracized her but include her when juicier gossip than her inter-racial marriage combines with the hiring of a girl from Bosnia (and the poor Bosnian girl takes Emmi's place in exile, sitting on the stairs alone as the other three look at her from a distance and gossip). Her children come back to her when it is more convenient to have Emmi babysit grandchildren than it is to try and pay for daycare.
Paradoxically, the reintegration of Emmi into society tests her marriage to Ali more strongly than her expulsion from it. He would like to eat Couscous. She scolds him and says that she not only doesn't know how to cook them, but that Ali should get used to eating normal German food. Ali becomes a showpiece. There is a dehumanizing scene where her friends come to the apartment and Ali is forced to stand flexing his muscles so that they can walk around him inspecting him and feeling how big his muscles are. The question, heading into the final act of the film, is whether the connection that Ali and Emmi first felt can save their marriage. They were equals once, but they may not be now.
'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,' aggressively examines societal reaction to the marriage, and then more subtly looks for the under-lying reasons. There is much here for anyone who wants to be well rewarded by a very excellent film.
There are many great moments, but one which stands out for me is when Emmi and Ali sit alone at a table at an outdoors restaurant. They are surrounded by a sea of empty tables, isolated and alone except for each other. It is hard to miss the symbolism here and I'm sure there are some who would believe that Fassbinder was laying it on a bit thick. I'm not one of those people. To reinforce the loneliness of their situation, the camera pans back to the restaurant. The workers are all standing, huddled together and staring in a mixture of disbelief and horror at the couple. Emmi, long on the verge of a breakdown, begins to cry, curse them, yell at them; Ali comforts her quietly and takes her hands in his own.
'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul' is the story of a 60 year old German woman who falls in love and marries a 40 year old Moroccan. How they act with each other and are reacted to by German society is the larger scope of the film. The pairing can represent a number of things: 1) Ageism: Emmi's adult children find not only the unimagined libido of their mother distasteful, they find her choice of partner sickening as well. 2) Inter-racial marriage: Though German, Emmi was regarded suspiciously for having once been married to a Polish man. At least, the film implies, he was white. Ali is described with every imaginable hate-filled epithet and Emmi is named 'whore' and every synonym for it. 3) Gay marriage: Fassbinder and El Hedi Ben Salem were lovers. It isn't much of a stretch to substitute two gay men for an old woman and a Moroccan. Would the reaction be any different in the vast majority of countries around the world?
One of the film's best sequences is the opening. Emmi is trying to avoid the rain so she seeks shelter in a bar haunted almost exclusively by Arab men. Beautiful camera work and menace as the shot comes from their eyeline (standing in a cluster at the far end of the bar) to her eyeline (sitting -- cowering even -- at a table as far away as possible). This idea of xenophobia is established in the opening reel of the film. "Ali," as he introduces himself to her is not even his real name. He explains that Germans don't have the patience or energy to use his full name (El Hedi ben Salem M'Barek Mohammed Mustapha) and so give him a generic name that is used for all Arab men: Ali.
I find the notion of Xenophobia interesting. Fassbinder suggests that society needs or uses xenophobia as a source of power. Inclusion and exclusion are how each strata of society empowers itself. The working class is here empowered by excluding non-native Germans. We learn that Arab men tend to end up in the hospital every six months with perforated ulcers. "But why?" asks Emmi. "The stress," answers the doctor. "We patch them up but they'll be back in six months with another."
I'm not a speaker of German so I had to rely on the sub-titles. I thought it was very interesting translation though. Emmi is given perfect syntax. Ali's phrases are often clipped and simplistic. His ideas are complex "Fear eats the soul," but his expression of them are not. A good idea of Fassbinder's to exaggerate the difficulties for Ali to integrate -- his attempt to purchase 'Libelle,' a new kind of margarine, from an ignorant and racist storekeeper is very effective.
The interesting switch that the film uses with this notion of exclusion is that while terrible, it may pass. It doesn't go away, but it does have transference. Ali and Emmi want to escape it for a while so they go on vacation. When they come back, the ignorant shop keeper now wants their business (money talks and the supermarket down the street is killing him). The neighbors who had once demanded Emmi sweep the stairs more frequently (Ali is constantly sneered at as being "one of those dirty Arabs") is now courted at for her large storage closet in the basement. Her co-workers once ostracized her but include her when juicier gossip than her inter-racial marriage combines with the hiring of a girl from Bosnia (and the poor Bosnian girl takes Emmi's place in exile, sitting on the stairs alone as the other three look at her from a distance and gossip). Her children come back to her when it is more convenient to have Emmi babysit grandchildren than it is to try and pay for daycare.
Paradoxically, the reintegration of Emmi into society tests her marriage to Ali more strongly than her expulsion from it. He would like to eat Couscous. She scolds him and says that she not only doesn't know how to cook them, but that Ali should get used to eating normal German food. Ali becomes a showpiece. There is a dehumanizing scene where her friends come to the apartment and Ali is forced to stand flexing his muscles so that they can walk around him inspecting him and feeling how big his muscles are. The question, heading into the final act of the film, is whether the connection that Ali and Emmi first felt can save their marriage. They were equals once, but they may not be now.
'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,' aggressively examines societal reaction to the marriage, and then more subtly looks for the under-lying reasons. There is much here for anyone who wants to be well rewarded by a very excellent film.