Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (The Criterion Collection)
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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Actor: Anita Bucher, El Hedi ben Salem, Elma Karlowa, Gusti Kreissl, Irm HermannDirector: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Love is Blind
Summary: 5 Stars
German Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this sweet and sad film about an older woman who falls in love with a much younger man. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is loosely based on Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. Unlike All That Heaven Allows, which features a mature but strikingly beautiful not-much-older woman in Jane Wyman, Brigitte Mira, who plays the MUCH older German housecleaner--in Ali: Fear Eats the soul--gives new meaning to the phrase "robbing the cradle." Her love interest, El Hedi ben Salem, is Ali, a Moroccan guest worker and auto mechanic. Intensifying their age discrepancy is race: Brigitte Mira's character is white and El Hedi ben Salem's character is black. That she and her late husband belonged to the Nazi Party further intensify their unlikely affair.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul begins as an old woman enters a bar. Outside, it's dark and wet; inside the bar, it's warm and dry. The tables in the bar are empty; a few patrons clustered at the bar--including the bartender, a tall, voluptuous, blonde--greet the old woman with hard cold stares. Besides the white bartender, the people clustered at the bar are black. Their strong looks ridicule and isolate the old woman--she becomes self-conscious and feels old and out of her place. As a joke, one of the women at the bar dares one of the men, the most attractive man, to dance with the old woman. That young man, Ali, approaches the old woman. He buys her a drink and they dance. The young women at the bar look in envy upon the slow-dancing couple, the young black man and the old white woman. They are very comfortable in each other's arms. He walks her home. She lives in an old apartment building. It's very late and it's still raining. She invites the young black man in for a moment, for a drink, and to dry himself a little. They talk. He asks her what she does for a living. She's embarrassed. Reluctantly she tells him that she's a cleaning woman. He seems impressed. She opens up to him. She's lonely. She has children in town but she only sees them on holidays. All of his family is back in Morocco.
After a drink and a small--but warm--conversation, the young black man prepares to leave. He lives on the other side of town where he shares a small room with five other men. The old woman invites him to stay at her home in her guestroom. He could leave in the morning when it's dry. Sometime in the night, the black man becomes restless. He knocks on the old woman's bedroom door, and she allows him inside. Thus, begins their unlikely--bittersweet--relationship.
This is a sweet, understated, and beautiful film. There are no bad police--a la Spike Lee, no Hiroshimas, and no confrontations with the Klan. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul shows the unseen side of racism by juxtaposing the outward emotions of the interracial couple. The white woman freely expresses her torn feelings at being isolated by her own kind; on the other hand, her young black husband is stoic and seems unconcerned with and unaffected by the racial hostilities directed at he and his wife. Through this couple is shown the safety of emotional expression against the danger of emotional repression and indifference, hence the film's sad soft conclusion. Fear, anger, pain--all these does eat the soul. This is a beautiful film.
Author of Gotta Be Down!
Description of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (The Criterion Collection)
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