Acclaimed film director Fatih Akin’s Turkish-German origins often spill into his films, and the 2007 Cannes winner for its screenplay, The Edge of Heaven, is one of them. Criss-crossing between the lives of six people across Germany and Turkey, Akin’s fascination for parent-child relationships is skilfully woven in.
We see a young Turkish professor in Germany, Nejat Aksu (in a superbly underplayed performance by Baki Davrak), dealing with his alcoholic widower father Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) in a mature, knowing manner, till Ali brings home Yeter (Nursel Köse), a prostitute, as his live-in girlfriend. Nejat’s disapproval soon turns to fondness for Yeter, who accidentally dies after a blow from Ali.
In shame and hope for forgiveness for his father’s actions, Nejat moves to Turkey in search of Yeter’s daughter Ayten, for whose education she used to worry.
Unbeknownst to Nejat, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay), a political activist, escapes to Germany, where she meets Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), a passionate German girl who offers her a home and unconditional support.
Lotte’s mother Susanne (Hanna Schygulla), meanwhile, isn’t pleased to have a loud-mouthed rebel like Ayten in the house. Ayten, however, is soon arrested for being an illegal immigrant and sent back to Turkey to be imprisoned.
Ayten’s long-standing frustration towards the political regime and failing education system is evident even behind bars, while Lotte unquestioningly posts herself in Turkey for months to help her in her struggle, much to her mother’s disapproval.
Another impending death brings Lotte’s mother Susanne to Turkey to put to rest what her daughter had set out to do. Susanne happens to meet Nejat in Turkey, little knowing how their lives are inexplicably connected — yet they manage to provide each other with solace.
Through a series of coincidences and misses, the director establishes relationships that have formed even without physical tangibility. The highly engaging story, with its tense political and emotional background, gives Akin fine ground in which to place his competent actors. Nejat’s heartfelt search for Ayten and Susanne’s sacrifice for her daughter’s love pushes the story far beyond its screenplay.
The Edge of Heaven moves at a slow pace, but it’s not long enough to get lost in the plot either. It is interestingly and neatly structured, gently moving back and forth between three parent-children relationships, and those found and lost in between.
The film’s simple camera-work and minimal background score is not wholly striking but, for an emotion-heavy story like this, it works to its advantage.
Though the events can often be depressing, the strength of the characters keeps the mood buoyant. Particularly moving is a gentle exchange of parental comfort between Nejat and Susanne, which sets him out to seek his father — on a road he has often taken, but this will be a new journey.
Opening titles already announce death at periodic intervals in the film, and the events that precede and follow play out without the great sense of drama usually attached to sudden death. The Edge of Heaven, in the end, finds comfort in forgiveness. Though set at the heart of Turkish-German immigrant conflicts and youthful political rebellion, the film’s emotional universality reaches out.
