FILMY TALES
7
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
About the Director:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945 - 1982) was a German film director, screenwriter, and actor. In the thirteen years of his career, Fassbinder made over forty films about social and political issues, including both The Marriage of Maria Braun as well as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. At the core of Fassbinder's work was a desire to provoke people and make them uncomfortable. These proclivities earned him the reputation as the 'enfant terrible' of New German Cinema, but also helped to make him a standout figure in the genre. Fassbinder's life came to a tragic end in 1982 as the result of a lethal overdose of illegal narcotics.
On a rainy day like any other, an unconventional relationship develops between two lonely people at a bar in 1970s Munich. The bar caters primarily to foreign workers, especially Arabs, who come to socialize and escape the rejection they receive as guest workers. Inspired by other films of the time, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul presents a simple love story entangled in the prejudices and stereotypes held by members of German society. As in many of Fassbinder's films, one of the underlying themes of this movie is the idea that the identities of Germans are still wrapped up in (while simultaneously being horrified by) the country's Nazi past; this, naturally, plays into the film's other themes of social oppression and racism.
The film centers around Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), a 40-something Moroccan immigrant who is far removed from his culture and made the center of German condescension and hostility; he is, undeniably, a social outcast. Emmi (Bridgette Mira) is also on a somewhat low rung of the social pecking order, having lost her husband many years prior and fallen out of contact with her children and friends. To escape the rain one evening, Emmi ducks inside the Arabic bar frequented by Ali and his friends where he asks her to dance. From there, the two fall in love and marry, likely out of their mutual need to be loved, but the film goes to great lengths to show that they really do admire and care for each other, even if the outside world finds their relationship disgusting.
Together, the couple faces prejudices at every turn: Emmi's neighbors band together to have Ali evicted (as they assumed he was only subleasing from Emmi), the shop where Emmi has done business for years refuses to serve her or Ali any longer, and even Emmi's children reject their mother—denouncing her house as a "pigsty" and naming her a "whore". The resentment they face reflects not only the ageism that is extremely present in society, but also the unwavering adherence many Germans had to the idea that foreigners were nothing but troublesome trash. The film challenges these ideas not only by making both Emmi and Ali extremely empathetic characters, but also by making the bitter and vitriolic reactions so obviously wrong (rather than subtler, more casual incidents of racism) that the majority of people would be disgusted by them outright.
Eventually, the stress of rejection becomes too much to bear for both Emmi and Ali, are seeds of change are sown in their relationship. Slowly, Emmi comes to adopt the xenophobic views of her friends; readily showing off Ali to her coworkers as though he were a pet, and then attributing his outrage at this to his "foreign mentality". When Emmi shows up the next day at Ali's workplace, his friends tease her cruelly, but Ali makes no move to stop them. These scenes, in addition to many others, are some of the film's defining moments as they expose the influence that our friends and communities can have on us (i.e. the idea that even good people can go wrong if they have bad friends).
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is an examination of the dangerous effects of racism and prejudice on relationships in people. Even in the film's weakest moments, it still presents a plea for tolerance for all people regardless of race or customs. The film is a must-see for any believer in social justice, as it presents a strong critique of the bigoted nature of not just German society but others that look down on foreigners as well. Ultimately, the film is colored in some way by Fassbinder's personal experiences, and urges us to find hope in even the most hopeless of situations, even though he himself could not.