Angst Essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) Reviews
ColeSmithey.com
"Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" is a timeless examination of the insidious effects of prejudice and racism on relationships.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
This 1974 film stands as one of Fassbinder's sturdiest achievements, posed between the low-budget funkiness of his early features and the mannerism of his late period.
Film4
A powerful attempt to deal with a range of serious issues as well as the characters' own complex psychologies. Visually and dramatically intense, it remains one of Fassbinder's finest.
Empire Magazine
Affecting and moving drama that really explores the selfish nature behind human actions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
CinePassion
Manages to be both more clinical and more humane than Martha
Technically flawless, deceptively simple and avoiding excesses, it is about problems that are timely and timeless in implications.
TV Guide's Movie Guide
A mordant satire that's also a touching romance and a powerful indictment of prejudice.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Combustible Celluloid
Fassbinder made this one on the cheap between bigger projects and scored with a beautifully observed, and even oddly gentle tale.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Time Out
Top CriticFassbinder uses dramatic and visual excess to push everyday events to extremes, achieving a degree of political and psychological truth not accessible through mere social realism.
It is, rather, another quite courageous attempt by Mr. Fassbinder to develop a film style free of the kind of realistic conventions that sentimentalize life's mysteries.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Q Network Film Desk
A simple and powerful film of great and quiet beauty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
A chilling tale about bias.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
ToxicUniverse.com
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Slant Magazine
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Reno Gazette-Journal
A movie that's simple and honest. It plays universally and feels particularly relevent in 21st century America.
Full Review | Original Score: A
Not Coming to a Theater Near You
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.
San Francisco Examiner
One of Fassbinder's loosest and most powerful films.
| Original Score: 5/5
Filmcritic.com
One of Fassbinder's crown jewels, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is as powerful as any film he ever made, despite its pedestrian premise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
