It isn't enough for director and writer Fatih Akin to show that we're all only a few degrees from each other across countries; rather, he's also interested in the level of connectedness.
The Edge of Heaven (2008)
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work ![]()
Reviews Counted: 69
Fresh: 62
Rotten:7
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Consensus: Evocative and complex, this story of struggling immigrants in Germany will stay with you after you leave the theater.
Theatrical Release:May 21, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $561,187
Synopsis:
Retired widower Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) sees a solution to his loneliness when he meets prostitute Yeter
(Nursel Köse), and he proposes that his fellow Turkish native live with him in exchange for a...
Retired widower Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) sees a solution to his loneliness when he meets prostitute Yeter
(Nursel Köse), and he proposes that his fellow Turkish native live with him in exchange for a low
rent. At first Alis German Professor son Nejat (Baki Davrak) seems disapproving about his fathers
choice, but the young professor quickly grows fond of kind Yeter, especially upon discovering most
of her hard-earned money is sent home to Turkey for her daughters university studies.
The accidental death of Yeter further distances father and son, both emotionally and physically.
Nejat then decides to travel to Istanbul to begin an organized search for Yeters daughter Ayten
(Nurgül Yes¸Ilçay). He decides to stay in Turkey and trades places with the owner of a German
bookstore who goes home to Germany. What Nejat doesnt know is that 20-something political
activist Ayten is already in Germany, having fled the Turkish police.
Alone and penniless, Ayten is befriended by German student Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), who is
immediately seduced by the young Turkish womans charms and political situation. Lotte invites
rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, a gesture not particularly pleasing to her conservative mother
Susanne. However Ayten ends up arrested and confined for months while awaiting political asylum.
When her plea is denied, Ayten is deported and imprisoned in Turkey.
Passionate Lotte decides to abandon everything to help Ayten and as the story develops she meets
Nejat. --© Official Site
[More]
Starring: Baki Davrak, Nursel Kose, Hanna Schygulla, Tunçel Kurtiz
Starring: Baki Davrak, Nursel Kose, Hanna Schygulla, Tunçel Kurtiz, Nurgül Yesilçay, Patrycia Ziolkowska
Director: Fatih Akin
Director: Fatih Akin
Screenwriter: Fatih Akin
Producer: Andreas Thiel, Klaus Maeck, Fatih Akin
Composer: Shantel
Studio: Strand Releasing
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Reviews for The Edge of Heaven
[It's] a much-needed maturation of the Babel/Crash formula but also fails to rattle your bones the way those movies did. Pick your poison, I suppose.
He [director Fatih Akin] makes the random moments and chance encounters of life seem both utterly unpredictable and completely inevitable.
What we don't suspect, going in, is that a film of such plain-speaking admonitions can exploit the element of surprise. Yet this heartfelt and precisely assembled drama does just that.
Propelled by the beautiful camerawork and scenery that moves back and forth between pastoral idyll and urban chaos as it takes the viewer on a journey that ends with a final image as quiet and beautiful as any in recent cinema.
Intricate emotionally as well as in narrative terms, poignant but not mawkish, and told in an austerely compelling style, this is a wise and absorbing drama.
This is a movie that was pretty involving, which makes me all the more frustrated that it just ends without any closure. Sometimes it works in movies, but here it would have helped to have the story fully completed.
The actors, except for Schygulla, are unknown - and they bring an air of weary authenticity to their roles.
What Akin says about parent-child relationships is perceptive, and the cast is very good.
Akin doesn't hide the fatal destinies of major characters... but it's the lives of the survivors and how they choose to carry on that carry these crisscrossing stories.
Loneliness, loss and capricious love guide the fortunes of three families in this powerful, beautifully realized drama by German-Turkish writer/director Fatih Akin.
...eventually you can't help but wonder if these poor folks are being tossed about by the capricious winds of fate -- or just jerked around by an ambitious young screenwriter.
The Edge of Heaven explores topics as varied as the tensions that accompany multiculturalism and globalization to the simpler human drama of how individuals cope with losses for which they bear a portion of the responsibility.
Akin has the audacity and skill to create two characters who do not meet within the scope of the film but whom we know are fated for one another as surely as a trout and a stream.
The care that Akin expends on his people is skimped in the structure of his screenplay.
In a single two-hour film, Akin strikes the notes of emotional distress, geographical dissonance, generational discord, and nearly divine convergence that Kieslowski orchestrated over nearly six hours.
Akin's latest masterwork may...mark him as the man to inherit the mantle of the late, great Krzysztof Kieslowski.
Latest News for The Edge of Heaven
May 25, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review ![]()
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May 24, 2008:
Cross-cultural melodrama explores Turkish immigrants' adjustment to Germany. ![]()
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