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FILM REVIEW OF
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's
“ANGST ESSEN SEELE AUF”
89 minutes, colour (1974)
English Title: "Ali - Fear Eats The Soul"
Starring: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem
Résumé: A beautiful love story triumphs over the racial prejudices that work against it.
Story: ∙ A sixty-year-old German widow, whose first husband was Polish, befriends a forty-year-old Moroccan immigrant in Munich and invites him over to her apartment for a coffee and a Cognac. After a first evening spent together, she “dares” fall in love with him and the man respectfully succumbs…
∙ Neighbours, friends and relatives reject the new couple which progressively finds itself excluded from its social environment. But, determined Emmi and spontaneous Ali move on to marry, deciding to ignore the racist stance of the society they live in.
∙ As time passes “healing all”, the couple’s “fiends” gradually shift stance towards the couple. Alas, as in nearly any couple, absolute harmony is but shortlived. Nevertheless, love is so strong that finally wins, although the social pressure Ali has suffered will end up costing him a lot.
Comments: Fassbinder’s movie is artistically simple and very moving. Its power lies in the story it tells, the simplicity of its cinematographic rendering and the analytical precision with which a xenophobic society is described, in which fear dictates social attitude. The actors avoid any superfluous play and the ugliness of racism in the soul of those who are possessed by it is poetically transcribed, mainly by the use of close-ups on grimaces, that exaggerate it and thus bring it to the fore.
In brief: VERY TOUCHING (****)
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