In a chance encounter, a German widow meets a Moroccan man twenty years younger than her, and the two progress from talking to friendship to marriage, much to the consternation of those around them. Her neighbors, co-workers, the grocer, and her children all convey varying shades of the ugliness of racism - and we see it both before and after they know about her relationship. Some of it comes from the mouths of sweet looking little old ladies, others from people like her son-in-law, a blue collar worker who is bitter over having a Tunisian boss and who denigrates foreigners while sitting on his ass on a pretend sick day, bossing his wife around and drinking a beer.
It's easy to think of the film positively because of its message of the need for tolerance, especially given how relevant that continues to be. I mean the title alone, from the Arabic saying "Fear Eats the Soul," how apt is that at a time when fear is used for such ugly purposes against immigrants, right? But the film is more than that, giving us unflinching honesty and three dimensional characters. I liked how many of them evolve over the movie, and while it has a clear message, it's also not simplistic. The couple have their problems too, and aren't perfect.
There are some scenes where such mean things get said that it may put a lump in your throat, but I never felt like it was heavy-handed, when it would have been easy to slip into that trap. How ironic it was that the couple have a fancy lunch at the restaurant that Hitler used to frequent from 1929 to 1933, and it's an easy leap to think that some of the characters in the film would be the type to embrace fascism a generation prior. But when she has her friends examine his muscles as if he were some kind of animal, and when later his friends laugh at her age in the auto shop - these scenes are just as brutal. We're also reminded that there are other immigrants and people deemed to be outsiders in the form of her first husband (from Poland), and a new hire to the cleaning lady team (from Yugoslavia).
I loved both the character of the old widow and Brigitte Mira's performance. She is earnest, direct, and brave. She has seen a lot over her years; she was a Nazi party member when young, married an immigrant after the war, been left alone by her adult children, and slaved over her cleaning job without getting a raise. She's lonely but she's dignified, and knows the value of kindred souls. She is consistently true to her feelings, not worrying what others may think, and the relationship she has with this man (El Hedi ben Salem) is based on communication and kindness. Then scene where she holds his hands on a patio and suggests they go away together to escape the hatred around them (including the staff of the restaurant who stand stone-faced and glare at them from afar) is quite touching. I loved the way Fassbinder slowly panned back at the end of it, almost a wish that they could just be left alone in their little island of happiness.
It's easy to think of the film positively because of its message of the need for tolerance, especially given how relevant that continues to be. I mean the title alone, from the Arabic saying "Fear Eats the Soul," how apt is that at a time when fear is used for such ugly purposes against immigrants, right? But the film is more than that, giving us unflinching honesty and three dimensional characters. I liked how many of them evolve over the movie, and while it has a clear message, it's also not simplistic. The couple have their problems too, and aren't perfect.
There are some scenes where such mean things get said that it may put a lump in your throat, but I never felt like it was heavy-handed, when it would have been easy to slip into that trap. How ironic it was that the couple have a fancy lunch at the restaurant that Hitler used to frequent from 1929 to 1933, and it's an easy leap to think that some of the characters in the film would be the type to embrace fascism a generation prior. But when she has her friends examine his muscles as if he were some kind of animal, and when later his friends laugh at her age in the auto shop - these scenes are just as brutal. We're also reminded that there are other immigrants and people deemed to be outsiders in the form of her first husband (from Poland), and a new hire to the cleaning lady team (from Yugoslavia).
I loved both the character of the old widow and Brigitte Mira's performance. She is earnest, direct, and brave. She has seen a lot over her years; she was a Nazi party member when young, married an immigrant after the war, been left alone by her adult children, and slaved over her cleaning job without getting a raise. She's lonely but she's dignified, and knows the value of kindred souls. She is consistently true to her feelings, not worrying what others may think, and the relationship she has with this man (El Hedi ben Salem) is based on communication and kindness. Then scene where she holds his hands on a patio and suggests they go away together to escape the hatred around them (including the staff of the restaurant who stand stone-faced and glare at them from afar) is quite touching. I loved the way Fassbinder slowly panned back at the end of it, almost a wish that they could just be left alone in their little island of happiness.