Head-On (2004)

That was an excellent one.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

"Gegen die Wand" is a German/Turkish 2-hour film from over 10 years ago. It was not the breakthrough movie for writer and director Faith Akin, but it is probably his most famous work so far, and his most successful. It won big at the German Film Awards, European Film Awards and several other awards bodies, even if it was not chosen to represent Germany in the Foreign Language Oscar race. That's not a problem though as I don't believe this is a movie the Academy would go for. It was a bit of a breakthrough film for lead actor Birol Ünel and a definite breakthrough for Sibel Kekilli, who you may have seen not too long ago in "Game of Thrones". Lets talk a bit about the characters they play. Ünel plays a Turkish man who has basically fully adapted to life in Germany, without culture or religion. Without his name, you could think he is actually German. He also does not look really Turkish. But he is. And that is crucial as Kekilli's character wants to marry him in order to find peace with his traditional family. However, in reality and spirit, she is very much alike to her fake husband. She wants to have fun, sleep around, party etc., just live the life.Both main characters have a talent for being self-destructive. The male has severe anger management issues that result in a moment which changes everything. The female has a drug problem, but is also too free-spirited for her own good, which may cost her everything on several occasions. Both lead actors play their parts very well and are the heart and soul of the film. The perception that Ünel is the only real lead becomes flawed when the actions starts focusing almost entirely on Kekilli's character two thirds into the movie. There are some very tense scenes in here and this may not be a good watch for younger audiences.I wrote earlier that this is probably Akin's most known film. He has worked on several films that combine German (locations) with foreign (for example Greek and Italian) culture. Here we get his take on his very own roots as you can easily see by his name. It is probably also his most serious film. Many of his works have a fair share of humour and comedy attached to them. "Gegen die Wand" does not and that is perfectly fine, even if it's not the best choice to represent Akin's generally lighter body of work. I think it would not have fit the tone at all. This is a really good dramatic character study and I also liked that he does not go for a forced happy ending by any means. It also fits the description of my review. The movie deals almost exclusively only with the time in the two protagonists' lives, during which they know each other and deal with one another. At the end, he is her way into her past, into a world, in which she may be free, but is it worth sacrificing her present for this new life? It's a question you will have to answer for yourself just like Sibel did. A pretty good film and I recommend the watch. Quite tense from start to finish.

The story - Its slightly complicated. Its about two people. The male protagonist (names I cant pronounce) who was running away from life due to a certain nothingness in his life. He faces a girl who is running away, albeit from family and traditions of a Turkish family settled in Hamburg. She bumps into him and asks him to help her. Help, for marrying her so that she could come out of her boundations and life life, the way she wants to and discover things.While the guy is forced into this union, the association changes their lives in different ways. They agreed that they are only taking help of each other to satisfy the girls parents. It turns out that the girl goes on her reckless way discovering what she wants in life, and the guy who had no interest in anything falls in love with this girl.A turn of events bring them close emotionally but take them apart at the same time. The movie is all about the tryst in their fortunes and how the characters integrate their lives with their hopes of living it a certain way.For the complexity this movie tries to portray, yet handling the plot very well, I give it a 7 on 10.

Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with? asked The Buzzcocks. A song filled with verve and energy, it could easily have played over the end credits here.Sibel is so oppressed by the demands of her traditional Turkish family that she is suicidal. Recovering from a failed attempt on her own life in the mental ward, she meets Cahit, a drunken, disillusioned Turkish immigrant losing his heritage identity to a German one he neither understands nor aspires to. Sibel proposes marriage, seeing in Cahit a chance to live freely while presenting a veneer of conformity to her family. What Cahit sees in Sibel is one of the questions the narrative strives to answer. When Sibel's brother asks Cahit if he loves Sibel, the answer he gives dooms him.Birol Ünel is the hang-dog Cahit, a man who expects nothing and gives as much in return. In Germany he is a Turk, but back in Turkey he finds common ground only with a taxi driver in their shared German experience. Sibel is Juliet and Lady Macbeth rolled into one, or perhaps just another young woman looking to get her jollies before settling down to domestic mediocrity. The oppression she seeks to flee is genuine enough - an honour killing is threatened and then botched.The films strengths are the performances from the leads, strangely vital and life-affirming in a tragedy, and the visual storytelling and economy, especially in the end. Years are compressed and the choices that Sibel has made, that ultimately seal her fate, are relayed through mise-en-scene and not dialogue. Happiness, the ending suggests, would be too much to bestow on this pair, but a sense that each is better for meeting the other provides sufficient succor. Violent and vicious in places, and fraught with self-loathing, Head-On is in its essence a great love story about the redemptive power of wanting to live for another.

I have previously seen only one film by director Faith Akin 'Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul' - a documentary full of love for the city of Istanbul and its music, which had made me wish to visit this place where I have never been. 'Gegen die Wand' is a fiction movie, and a very different strong and ambitious one. It's the story of two Turkish immigrants in Germany, a man over 40 and a girl half his age entering a marriage of convenience so that the girl can escape the pressure of the family to enter into a convenience marriage and can live a 'normal' 'free' life. When the pretended marriage develops their love will play both the role of savior and destruction. They will be saved as love gives sense to their destinies marked by disorientation and suicidal tendencies, they risk to be destroyed as in a very melodramatic but but still believable twist of fate they will never be able to fulfill their feelings into common fate. They will be save but pursue of happiness needs to happen on separate paths.I liked the film, and I believe that its charm resides in the fact that the director does not refuse but instead adopts the ways, sounds and eventually images (the first half of the film happens in Germany, the second one in Turkey) of the Turkish cinema. Story telling takes what it needs from the oriental melodrama and combines it with modern cut and discrete acting. We do have musical prologues, intermezzo and finale, all filmed in a conventional touristic like manner on the shores of the Bosporus, just underlining the drama of the music and of the text in an operatic manner. We are being taken into the Turkish enclave in Hamburg, and in the fascinating combination of old, new, sea and colors so well known for everybody who visited and loved the cities around the Mediterranean. Birol Ünel and Sibel Kekilli give strong performances and the overall film atmosphere gives a feeling of authenticity and sincerity. The social commentary is sharp and not forgiving when it comes to the conflicts between the traditional and the modern societies. This was my first experience with a Turkish fiction film and a very positive one.