Wednesday, April 20, 2005
LOVE WILL TEAR US APART AGAIN
Okay, I'm back, after a mini-hiatus. I really hadn't expected to be gone for a couple of weeks, but I just haven't been up to going to the movies as much as I have been. I think Sin City left a bad taste in my mouth. I thought about going to see The Best of Youth, the six hour Italian film, but I just couldn't psyche myself up for it. I think it was imagining spending those six hours in the ass-breaking seats of the Music Box that put me off the idea. Anyway, on to a new review.
I recently saw Head On, by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, at the Esquire theater. First of all, what happened to the Esquire? I hadn't been there in about ten years and, while it was never a particularly beautiful theater, it used to be like any of your other pleasant, new or newly renovated theaters. Now, it's dark and dingy and has the stink of failed movie theater all over it. You know, the kind of place where there are way too many employess just standing around doing nothing. They actually seemed surprised that someone was there to see a movie. I wouldn't be shocked if it closed within a year or two.
So I go into the theater and have to sit through that awful DeNiro, American Express commercial. You know, the one where he talks about how much he loves New York and how he could never live anywhere else and how much New York means to him, and blah, blah, blah. So, you're thinking it's going to be about some September 11th charity or, at the very least, some kind of ad for New York City toursim, only you find out it's for American Express. What a focking whore! Does he really need the money that badly? Don't his shitty movies pay the bills?
Where were we? Oh, yeah. Head On is the story of Cahit (Birol Unel), a forty-ish Turk living in Hamburg. In the opening scenes of the film, he drives his car into a brick wall while drunk and high. Recovering in a hospital, he meets Sibel (SibelKekilli), a young Turkish woman there because of a suicide attempt. She asks Cahit to marry her, so that she can break free from her oppressive family, particularly her brutish older brother. Cahit begs off at first, but soon comes around to the idea. They get married, but both continue to have sex with other people, all the while using copious amount of drugs and alcohol. Eventually, Sibel and Cahit begin to develop feelings for each other; feelings that each of them is reluctant to admit might be love. The film then turns from a dark, yet funny, opposites-attract story to a tragedy.
All I can say is that that Head On really knocked me out. It moves with that kind of fantastic logic that some great films have, where nothing is really predictable, but each new scene builds on the last and causes you to say to yourself, "That's it! That's right! It would happen just like that."
The performances are tremendous. Birol Unel looks like a cross between Benicio Del Toro and Charles Bukowski and slowly allows us to see the lonely, haunted man beneath the drugs and booze. Sibel Kekilli is simply stunning. I'm not sure if she's a great actress, but what a presence. She has a compelling, unconventionally pretty face with one of the most interesting noses I've ever seen. (Indeed, if you have a nose fetish, Head On is your movie.) Her character is at times girlish and slutty, sweet and vicious, likeable and repellent. Kekilli makes you see all of these facets of the character. It's one of those performances that doesn't even seem like acting. Absolutely ferocious.
I suppose I could say something about Head On's possible subtext. Something like displaced people that are not of one culture or another have a particularly difficult time finding their places in the world. I believe that idea is there in the film, but I'm not that interested in it because I thought that Sibel and Cahit were so crazy that it would be a stretch to say that their story is representative of the Turkish immigrant experience in Germany. Let's put it this way, if both characters had grown up and lived their lives in Turkey, I think that there would have been a good chance that they would have turned out the same way.
Indeed, Head On didn't leave me thinking about the Turkish-German immigrant experience, but feeling that this was one of the more romantic films that I've seen in a long time. It was crazy, violent, and unplesant, sure, but romantic all the same. ¶ 7:49 AM
I recently saw Head On, by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, at the Esquire theater. First of all, what happened to the Esquire? I hadn't been there in about ten years and, while it was never a particularly beautiful theater, it used to be like any of your other pleasant, new or newly renovated theaters. Now, it's dark and dingy and has the stink of failed movie theater all over it. You know, the kind of place where there are way too many employess just standing around doing nothing. They actually seemed surprised that someone was there to see a movie. I wouldn't be shocked if it closed within a year or two.
So I go into the theater and have to sit through that awful DeNiro, American Express commercial. You know, the one where he talks about how much he loves New York and how he could never live anywhere else and how much New York means to him, and blah, blah, blah. So, you're thinking it's going to be about some September 11th charity or, at the very least, some kind of ad for New York City toursim, only you find out it's for American Express. What a focking whore! Does he really need the money that badly? Don't his shitty movies pay the bills?
Where were we? Oh, yeah. Head On is the story of Cahit (Birol Unel), a forty-ish Turk living in Hamburg. In the opening scenes of the film, he drives his car into a brick wall while drunk and high. Recovering in a hospital, he meets Sibel (SibelKekilli), a young Turkish woman there because of a suicide attempt. She asks Cahit to marry her, so that she can break free from her oppressive family, particularly her brutish older brother. Cahit begs off at first, but soon comes around to the idea. They get married, but both continue to have sex with other people, all the while using copious amount of drugs and alcohol. Eventually, Sibel and Cahit begin to develop feelings for each other; feelings that each of them is reluctant to admit might be love. The film then turns from a dark, yet funny, opposites-attract story to a tragedy.
All I can say is that that Head On really knocked me out. It moves with that kind of fantastic logic that some great films have, where nothing is really predictable, but each new scene builds on the last and causes you to say to yourself, "That's it! That's right! It would happen just like that."
The performances are tremendous. Birol Unel looks like a cross between Benicio Del Toro and Charles Bukowski and slowly allows us to see the lonely, haunted man beneath the drugs and booze. Sibel Kekilli is simply stunning. I'm not sure if she's a great actress, but what a presence. She has a compelling, unconventionally pretty face with one of the most interesting noses I've ever seen. (Indeed, if you have a nose fetish, Head On is your movie.) Her character is at times girlish and slutty, sweet and vicious, likeable and repellent. Kekilli makes you see all of these facets of the character. It's one of those performances that doesn't even seem like acting. Absolutely ferocious.
I suppose I could say something about Head On's possible subtext. Something like displaced people that are not of one culture or another have a particularly difficult time finding their places in the world. I believe that idea is there in the film, but I'm not that interested in it because I thought that Sibel and Cahit were so crazy that it would be a stretch to say that their story is representative of the Turkish immigrant experience in Germany. Let's put it this way, if both characters had grown up and lived their lives in Turkey, I think that there would have been a good chance that they would have turned out the same way.
Indeed, Head On didn't leave me thinking about the Turkish-German immigrant experience, but feeling that this was one of the more romantic films that I've seen in a long time. It was crazy, violent, and unplesant, sure, but romantic all the same. ¶ 7:49 AM
