Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a strange amalgamation of cinematic influences, resulting in something wholly, destabilizingly original. Writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder encourages flat, Bresson-like performances, then sets them against dramatically composed, Sirkian interiors. And yet the movie lacks the transcendent aspiration of Bresson and the emotional impact of Sirk. In its remove—the archness of its construction—Ali points ahead to the likes of Sweden’s Roy Andersson and Texas’ Wes Anderson. Yet what little humor there is goes far beyond the dryness of those filmmakers, to the point of feeling desiccated. Ali is absolutely its own thing—fitting for a mid-career effort from a filmmaker known for deconstructing the very idea of movies in 1970s Germany (an impulse other critics have connected to the influence of Jean-Luc Godard).
As for the story, Ali centers on a middle-aged widow named Emmi (Brigitte Mira) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a much younger Moroccan immigrant (El Hedi ben Salem) who has resigned himself to being called Ali, because that’s what most Germans call him anyway. During a rainstorm, Emmi stumbles into a bar serving patrons from North Africa. Ali approaches her table to escape the routine of his life—drinking with the same working buddies, hooking up with the same women from the bar. In conversation, both are fascinated by the other. If it seems like a stretch that they sleep together that night and shortly after get married, well, you may not have noticed that when Ali asked Emma to dance at the bar and she took off her drab raincoat, she was wearing a brightly colored, boldly patterned dress underneath. This is a woman ready for another opportunity to blossom.
Is Munich of the early 1970s ready for this pair? (There is a reference to the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, in which members of a Palestinian militant group killed two Israeli athletes.) Much of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul broadly dramatizes the xenophobia and racism facing the central couple: Emmi’s coworkers shun her; the local grocer refuses to serve Ali; Emmi’s children disown her, punctuated by her son kicking his foot through her television set. Through all this, Mira manages to break from the aesthetic constrictions enough to register something that feels like a naturalistic performance, expressing anger, confusion, and heartbreak. Ben Salem, meanwhile, is more in keeping with the film’s overall tone: rigid, monotone, unmoved—perhaps because none of the discrimination and abuse has taken Ali by surprise.
If, as sociopolitical commentary, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul borders on the obvious, its form and structure keep you on your toes. Many scenes are handled as if they are dry run-throughs on a theatrical stage, albeit one that’s been meticulously production designed. It’s as if we’re purposefully kept at a distance. But then there are those moments when the camera lingers on Emmi in thoughtful reflection—the first night she brings Ali home; later, when he leaves her to return to the bar—and we feel as if we’re sharing an intimate moment. This is a movie that seems to have given up on the very idea of genuine human connection, even as it aches for exactly that.
(4/6/2023)
