Head-On (2004)

Excellent but underrated film

Excellent adaptation.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

I first encountered Fatih Akin in college. I was taking a class on German Film on my way to a concentration in German. Akin is easily one of my favorite filmmakers and Gegen die Wand is a major reason why. The story in Gegen die Wand is engaging, serious, funny, dramatic, and everything else you would expect from such a great movie. Don't be fooled, Gegen die Wand is intense as well covering such subjects as honor killings, immigration, cultural assimilation, drug abuse, and murder. Sibel and Birol bring their characters of Sibel and Cahit to life. In a epic first film, Sibel Kekilli shows herself to be a force to be reckoned with. While Birol Unel shows why he is one of Germany's best actors. Meanwhile, Fatih Akin demonstrates his amazing filmmaking abilities in a film that is personal.

I haven't watched such a great movie for a long time and it is really great to see that this is a Turkish movie. After Nuri Bilge Ceylan's success with Uzak in Cannes Film Festival, Faith Akin made a very successful move in contributing to Turkish cinema. First of all, the movie explains the life of the Turkish immigrants in Germany in a perfect way. We see how they cannot be neither German nor Turkish anymore. They are stuck in between and they act as punks. For instance, it is really true that most of the young Turkish people in Germany cannot speak Turkish, like Cahit. We also see the ridiculous pressure of Sibel's family: For instance, while her married brother threatens&beats her whenever she has a boyfriend, he and his friends can comfortably speak about how they sleep with prostitutes! Also the cast is very good, especially Sibel Kekilli and Birol Unel. I loved the scene where we can see the smile in Sibel's eyes in the amusement park: she is so much in love... In addition, there are so many things to say about the movie.. The story is a very striking one itself. The hopelessness of the characters in a world without love and moral values are explained so well-without making it dramatic. Also, Sibel's life in Istanbul, her cousin's life-like many of us: still single and waiting to be promoted!- are also judgements beside the main genre. The music is also very nice, with Depeche Mode and also traditional Turkish music. Faith Akin has really made a good job.. The script is excellent and the scenes are all pieces of artwork. I wish the best for him and all the cast and I hope to see movies perfect like this in the future too...

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.