Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Many of Fassbinder's best films possess a kind of cosmic balance. No one character or belief rises above another without the other shoe dropping.

Ali’s terse speaking matter is ripe with aphorisms, but it’s also another way for Fassbinder to evoke the suspended animation of his character’s lives.

A movie that's simple and honest. It plays universally and feels particularly relevent in 21st century America.

If this were the only film Fassbinder ever made, it would still be one of the great works of cinema. It's only the brilliance and scope of his work both before and after this film that keep me from declaring it his unqualified masterpiece.

One of Fassbinder's loosest and most powerful films.

One of Fassbinder's crown jewels, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is as powerful as any film he ever made, despite its pedestrian premise.

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