Head On and My Favorite Foreign Films

Head On and My Favorite Foreign Films
by Steve Finkelstein

As I stated in a previous article, Hollywood generally releases its “dogs” during the winter, on the theory that many people don’t want to brave the inclement weather to see such “winners” as Hide and Seek. What are the discerning filmgoing readers of Babblog to do? Fortunately, your intrepid film critic has found a German-Turkish language film that is already going to be on my list of the best films of 2005. Let me elaborate in the following review:

Head On: This is a bleak, harsh, uncompromising film—not one for the faint of heart. It is a pitch black romance that deals with two suicidal outpatients of a mental hospital. Cahit (Birol Unel) and Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) are residents of Hamburg, Germany, though of Turkish descent. Sibel is a more recent émigré and the restrictions her devout Muslim parents place on her cause her to frequently cut her wrists. Cahit is a cocaine-snorting alcoholic who can’t get over the death of his wife, and resorts to slamming his car into a wall in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. The two decide to enter into a platonic “marriage of convenience” to allow Sibel to enjoy a “freer” lifestyle (i.e., sex, drugs and rock and roll). Things take an unexpected and more ominous turn when the two fall in love with each other.

Unlike most mainstream movie critics, I'm not going to reveal too much more of the plot, in an effort not to spoil the film for potential viewers. Suffice to say, writer-director Fatih Akin (also a Hamburg resident of Turkish descent) is expert at depicting the strains Turkish Muslims face living in Germany. When riding the bus, Cahit and Siblel are called “Godless dogs” by a bus driver; on the other extreme, when Cahit and his uncle are going to meet Sibel’s parents, Cahit is repeatedly grilled by his uncle and his prospective in-laws on whether the candy Cahit is bringing as a gift contains alcohol or not. (Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol.) This cross-cultural strain is the reason why Sibel is so unstable; she embodies an uneasy hybrid of both Turkish and German culture and at the same time she doesn’t, causing her much angst.

This is an excellent film, and writer-director Akin displays much talent; I will be looking forward to future films from him. A very clever touch he employs is using a Turkish musical group (complete with singer), that functions as a “Greek chorus” to comment on the film’s narrative. The only thing I have left to say is go see this film.

I was heartened to see a foreign language film of high quality. I used to see many foreign films, but over the last 20 years their quality has declined (just like their U.S. counterparts), forcing me to see fewer films of that nature. If some of you are unfamiliar with foreign films and want a crash course on the best of them, what follows is a listing of what I think are the best of the lot. I’ve tried to include an eclectic cross-section of films from various countries; the names found in the parentheses are the films’ directors:

M (1931—German, Fritz Lang)
Bicycle Thief (1947—Italian, Vittorio De Sica)
Rashomon (1950—Japanese, Akira Kurosawa)
Wages of Fear (1952—French, HG Clouzot)
I Vitelloni (1953—Italian, Federico Fellini)
Seven Samurai (1954—Japanese, Akira Kurosawa)
La Strada (1954—Italian, Federico Fellini)
Wild Strawberries (1957—Swedish, Ingmar Bergman)
Z (1969—French, Costa-Gavras)
Day for Night (1973—French, Francois Truffaut)
Das Boot (1981—German, Wolfgang Petersen)
Amores Perros (2000—Mexican, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)

If you want more info on these films go to www.imdb.com. All of the above mentioned films are available on DVD; you won’t go wrong renting them.

See ya soon.

Steve can be reached at steve@babblog.com.