My Favorite R.W. Fassbinder Film

An elderly German cleaning woman named Emmi (Brigitte Mira) ducks into a local club frequented by Moroccan immigrants to get out of the rain. Encouraged by his joking friends, a thirty-something laborer named Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) dances with her, and walks her home at the end of the night. The two form a friendship which becomes something much deeper, and Ali moves into Emi's home. When the landlord objects, the pair decide to get married. This is the beginning of one of the most unusual and touching love stories I've ever found in film. It remains my favorite thing that New German Cinema auteur Rainier Werner Fassbinder ever did in his prolific and intense career.

Much has been made of the ties between "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" and Douglas Sirk's social dramas "All that Heaven Allows" and "Imitation of Life," which explored the relationship between an older woman and a younger man, and the friendship between a white mother and a black mother respectively. Fassbinder's film starts with the same premise as "All That Heaven Allows," but then pushes into very different territory, showing the relationship of Emmi and Ali at different stages, putting them in different situations and circumstances. We find them not only dealing with condemnation from friends and relatives, but are the source of many prejudices and problems themselves. They spend as much more time dealing with common relationship troubles as with the more obvious social stresses. Fassbinder is also much more cynical about their prospects, and "Ali" concludes in a far more uncertain place than the Sirk dramas, but is also a much more satisfying watch.

"Ali" was filmed during a two-week break that Fassbinder had between two other films, not an unusual feat for him, and this is reflected in the crudeness of the production. As with much of his work, it appears he had no budget to speak of. There are only a few sets, dressed very simply and starkly. There's not much camera movement, and occasionally it's hard to shake the feeling that we're watching a filmed play. However, the lack of technical sophistication serves to underscore the realism and daring of Fassbinder's approach to the material. He was a director who always pushed at boundaries in startling ways, making films about unconventional relationships, social outcasts, the unfortunate and the ignored. "Ali" is not just about an older woman and a younger man of different classes falling in love, but the extreme case of a gray-haired, grandmotherly widow paired with a well-muscled, bearded, virile foreigner in the prime of his life. Visually, the two are comically mismatched, making the connection between them all the more poignant and touching.

Fassbinder's actors do not look like actors, but real middle and lower class Germans, making the film reverberate on a more personal level. Emmi and Ali converse in simple terms and are not as worldly as the beautiful stars in Hollywood melodramas. Ali's German is poor, the subtitles reflect many grammatical errors. Their decision to be together seems so easy and matter-of-fact between the two of them, and it's only when Emmi delivers the new to her family, and they react badly, that she realizes how naive she's been about making Ali a part of her life. She faces scorn not from well-dressed, picture perfect suburbanites, but from her fellow cleaning ladies and a brood of very imperfect adult children. I marveled at how suitably wormy and unpleasant the young man playing Emmi's son-in-law looked, only to discover later that the director had cast himself in the part!

On my initial watch, I found it very startling that "Ali" features nudity and a sex scene between Ali and another woman. It is nothing particularly graphic or inappropriate, but I was fascinated by how direct and unflinching Fassbinder was in showing sexuality. Here was another facet of the story that it made perfect sense to include, but that mainstream filmmakers never would have dared to portray so bluntly. "Ali" tells such a small, personal story, but Fassbinder finds so much new territory to explore. Like his protagonists, the film can be difficult, but it is never predictable.

I went on to other Fassbinder films and his other tales of strange love. I'm very fond of "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" and his miniseries "Berlin Alexanderplatz." "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" remains my favorite though, not only because it is the perfect example of his unique filmmaking sensibilities, but because it genuinely moved me. I felt deeply for Emmi and Ali and wanted them to find a happy ending together that Fassbinder was not the sort to provide. that's why "Ali" still sticks with me, and why I love it far more than the films that inspired it.
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