The Need For Each Other Transcends Politics, Resentment in Absorbing ‘The Edge of Heaven’

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – As we sit here in the U.S. embroiled in the presidential elections and summertime, the rest of the world simmers within its own unique problems.

What about Germany and Turkey? Director and writer Fatih Akin answers this question in the film “The Edge of Heaven” through several distinct characters who symbolize relations between the countries.

Nurgül Yesilçay and Patrycia Ziolkowska in “The Edge of Heaven”. Photo credit: Strand Releasing

Ali is a Turkish retiree living in Germany. Bored out of his mind, he takes up with a prostitute named Yeter and invites her to be his live-in girlfriend. His son, Nejat (a university professor) is touched by Yeter’s devotion to a daughter back in Turkey.

A tragedy occurs when Ali suffers a health setback and takes out his frustrations on the hapless Yeter.

Yeter’s daughter, Ayten, is aimlessly perplexed when she stops hearing from her mother. She has gotten in hot water in her homeland as part of a radical political group and is exiled to Germany to hide and search for her mother.

It is there where she meets Lotte: a female graduate student who falls deeply in love with her. When immigration catches up to Ayten, she’s deported and is put in prison back in Istanbul, Turkey. Defying her mother, Lotte follows Ayten there in hopes of obtaining freedom for her.

“The Edge of Heaven” director Fatih Akin. Photo credit: Strand Releasing

Ali’s son, Nejat, also begins the search for Ayten to atone for his father’s sins.

The intersection of these characters in Istanbul will help create the solutions that can allow them all to move forward. Each character is heroic in his or her own way. Nejat is a stoic success story who’s embarrassed by his father but loyal to him.

Yeter earns money the only way she can while sacrificing for her daughter.

Ayten sticks to her radical convictions yet trusts the love of Lotte so much that she can finally allow some flexibility. Lotte’s mother has to find peace by understanding her daughter through herself.

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This film is about the search for love and connection. It’s not about the physical aspect of the person but the emotional.

The characters are constantly waiting for the signal that will draw them closer to who they are separated from while they’re frustrated by distances and misguided assumptions.

While Fatih Akin’s script and direction give his actors room to grow, they don’t necessarily give them the tools to do so. This is a film about being human that’s characterized by the final shot of yet another temporal period of anticipation.

In the plea for understanding between his fictional characters, the filmmaker is asking for more patience from all of us. He’s asking for patience to avoid jumping to selfish conclusions about that other person in our lives and to sometimes let the relationship play out on its own energy.

By PATRICK McDONALD Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com