This powerful and gentle film tells the story of love and marriage of Emmi, a 60+ widowed German cleaning lady and Ali, a Moroccan immigrant mechanic who is more than 20 (I think close to 30) years her younger. Their affair and the decision to marry shocked everyone who knew Emmi: her grown children, her neighbors, coworkers (mostly, middle-aged widows as herself) and even the owner of a neighborhood grocery shop where she has been a loyal customer for years. The way clever and observant Fassbinder looks at their struggle to keep the relationship is deeply pessimistic - the couple could survive the obstacles that society would create for them. They can survive disapproval, misunderstanding and prejudice but at the very moment they think all problems are in the past, they find the emptiness inside and two lonely hearts together are even worse than one. The more I think of it the more I realize that "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" is among the best, the most poignant, gentlest and heartbreaking descriptions of unavailability for happiness ever filmed. What makes the movie even more poignant is the fact that both Fassbinder and El Hedi ben Salem, the man whom Fassbinder loved and who played Ali committed suicide in the same year, Fassbinder - a few weeks after El Hedi. The film is also a love letter to El Hedi. In one of the film's most moving scene, Emmi looks at the man with whom she so suddenly and desperately fell in love with admiration, longing, and wise sadness while he dries himself after the shower. It is not only Emmi looks at Ali, it is Rainer looks with love and affection at the man he loved through the lenses of his camera.
Review of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
