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Germany, Turkey, Italy · 2007
2h 2m
Director Fatih Akin
Starring Baki Davrak, Tuncel Kurtiz, Hanna Schygulla, Patrycia Ziolkowska
Genre Drama
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Ali, a retired widower and Turkish immigrant living in Bremen, offers prostitute Yeter a monthly payment to stop working and keep him company. Ali's son, Nejat, is conflicted at first but eventually learns that Yeter is sending things back to her daughter in Turkey. After Yeter's unfortunate death, Nejat goes to Istanbul to search for her daughter.
It's not brilliant, but it wears current events on its sleeve, feeling out the state of German-Turkish relationships as the former Ottomans clean house for E.U. membership, and the demographic earthquake of 70 million Muslims waits at Europe's door.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
By the end you know the characters in it so well that you can't believe you've seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new. And that may be because the world they inhabit is immediately recognizable -- until we get to heaven, it's where we live -- and like no place you've been before.
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
I prefer to think of Akin, however, not as a forger of patterns but as an ironist who understands that bad luck is a crucible, in the heat of which we are tested, burned away, or occasionally transformed. The Edge of Heaven is about something more exasperating than crossed paths; it is about paths that almost cross but don't, and the tragedy of the near-miss.
Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
The Edge of Heaven is powerfully unsettled--it comes together by not coming together.
Superbly cast drama, in which the lives and emotional arcs of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- criss-cross through love and tragedy.
Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, director Fatih Akin brought an unusual cultural perspective to "Head On" about a marriage of convenience between a beautiful Turk and a suicidal German. In The Edge of Heaven, his first dramatic feature since then, the characters navigate the same cultural divide, but here Akin is more preoccupied with the sense of responsibility that links parents to their children (or vice versa).
Akin achieves a peaceful balance here –- alongside the death and seemingly senseless tragedy, there’s also a kind of reassuring equilibrium.
Akin divides The Edge Of Heaven into thirds, and ends the first two sections with emotionally devastating scenes of violence, before easing into a third section that deals with the repercussions and lessons learned.
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal.
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