'Gegen Die Wand' a deep, dark gem

'Gegen Die Wand' a deep, dark gem

Paul F. Agusta, Contributor/Jakarta

Imagine a life in which the only options appear to be a lifetime
of bondage or an uncertain existence as an object of contempt.
This is the choice that Sibel refuses to make in Gegen Die Wand,
a film by German-Turkish director Fatih Akin.

Suicidal with frustration at her lack of options, a young
woman from an ultratraditional Turkish family, Sibel Guner (Sibel
Kekilli, in a painfully real performance), believes she has found
a solution in the depressed, alcoholic cocaine addict Cahit
Tomruk, played heartbreakingly apathetic by Birol Unel, whom she
encounters in a psychiatric ward after they have both botched
exits from the dire straits of their lives.

"Will you marry me?" Sibel asks Cahit as he prepares to exit
the doctor's waiting room after a session. The reluctant Cahil,
tragically fractured from the impact of his first wife's untimely
death, fends off her pleas until she slits her wrist with a
broken bottle in a cafe.

Somehow, it seems to both of them that life together, but not
quite completely so, might provide some sort of remedy for their
pain.

After a brief but precisely correct courtship in terms of
Turkish tradition, Sibel and Cahit enter into a marriage of
convenience, in which Sibel finds the freedom she wants and Cahil
gets someone to clean and cook for him. They are husband and wife
on paper only, as Sibel leaves Cahit at home alone on their
wedding night and consummates her married state with a bartender.

Gegen Die Wand starts like a hard and fast cinematic kidney
punch and keeps you gasping as it rushes on into a beautiful
collision of love, violence, loss and redemption. In the hands of
the brilliant and gifted Fatih Akin, this film, for which he also
wrote the screenplay, transcends the genre of drama with a high
level dose of adrenaline and volatile sociopolitical subtexts.

With its superb acting, seamless directing, stunningly gritty
visuals, appropriately frenetic editing, and a massively moving
soundtrack, Gegen Die Wand is a tsunami of a film that drenches
the soul with a torrent of emotions that provoke a greater
understanding of the human experience, especially as it relates
to imposed gender roles.

The depictions of both the female and the male characters in
this film provide a vehicle for the discussion of gender issues
outside of the usual polemic of injustice and double standards.
Fatih Akin successfully walks the thin line between accusation
and absolution in his portrayal of rigid gender roles as
detrimental to both the male and female.

With this controversial and confrontational film, Fatih Akin
offers up dark, gritty, emotionally evocative and hard to ignore
cinema, while maintaining as objective a view possible of the two
diverse cultures he is dissecting. In this context, his work
feels like that of a darker, more objective, but equally militant
and socio-politically charged Costa-Gavras, the director of such
political films as "Z" and, most recently, "Amen".

Clearly a graduate of the MTV Generation of cinematic
approaches, Fatih Akin's bold and startling visual sequences are
rapid fire, and guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat.
They are also extremely engaging, with a deep, dark, almost
intoxicating beauty that at once carries the mood and the
thematic content.

Gegen Die Wand, which can be directly translated as Against
the Wall and which carries the official English title Head On, is
not a film to be missed. Be sure to catch it at JIFFEST at the
time and venue most convenient to you.

* Sunday, Dec. 5
7:30 p.m.
Erasmus Huis
Jl. Rasuna Said, Kuningan
(also Dec. 7 at same time and venue)

* Monday, Dec. 6
9:30 p.m.
Graha Bhakti Budaya

-- www.jiffest.org