In The Fade (18.)
Directed by Fatih Akin.
Starring Diane Kruger, Denis Moschitto, Numan Acar, Samia Muriel Chancrin, Johannes Krisch, Ulrich Tukur. In German with subtitles. 106 mins.
A perfectly executed tragic drama about grief, justice and bigotry, In The Fade is a film about messy, ugly emotions that is perhaps a little bit too neat and tidy. After a bomb attack decimates her family Katja (Kruger) has to try and deal with her numb grief. Sympathy is strained because her late husband was a reformed drug dealer that she married while he was in prison, and Turkish. Neither side of the family can quite put aside their disapproval of their union during the mourning, and the police immediately angle their investigation into looking for a former underworld associate looking for revenge.
The film rests entirely on Kruger's shoulders and she carries it lightly. Her initial exclamation of grief is a harrowing, primal yell, something that seems ripped from raw emotion and real human experience, rather than the culmination of years of endless acting exercises. She was well worth her best actress award at Cannes, though the whole cast is top notch.
After its devastating opening third, set in a Hamburg where it is perpetually raining, the film needs to reveal where it is heading and its destination is, unfortunately, a courtroom drama. I never really welcome the arrival of a courtroom in a movie narrative but at least this time attention is held by the oddities of the German legal system. There's no jury, a group of five judges oversee everything and the witnesses give their testimony with their back to the court, so they have to crane their head round to answer any questions and the barristers seem to be able to interject at any time. It's all bizarrely inefficient. Is this really how the German courtrooms work?
Everything else in this film is so organised and in its place. It's top level filmmaking but there is something distancing about the way it works its way through the tragedy gears. It's like the kind of “issue” drama that ITV might run over consecutive nights at 9.00, but much better.
Sharper readers will have noticed an 18 certificate attached to the film and wonder what level of depravity the film must contain to warrant that, given the levels of gore and mayhem that get waved through in 15 certificate movies. Well, after seeing it, you may still be mystified. The BBFC guidance says it is for Strong Bloody Images, and I assume that this is because the blood is connected with a suicide attempt. Still, it seems remarkably unfair and selective that this serious, unsensational drama should be so handicapped, especially as this is the second time this has happened to director Fatih Akin. A decade ago, his The Edge Of Heaven initially had an 18 certificate slapped on it for a pornographic image seen briefly on a background TV screen, though that was appealed and reduced down to 15. .
Directed by Fatih Akin.
Starring Diane Kruger, Denis Moschitto, Numan Acar, Samia Muriel Chancrin, Johannes Krisch, Ulrich Tukur. In German with subtitles. 106 mins.
A perfectly executed tragic drama about grief, justice and bigotry, In The Fade is a film about messy, ugly emotions that is perhaps a little bit too neat and tidy. After a bomb attack decimates her family Katja (Kruger) has to try and deal with her numb grief. Sympathy is strained because her late husband was a reformed drug dealer that she married while he was in prison, and Turkish. Neither side of the family can quite put aside their disapproval of their union during the mourning, and the police immediately angle their investigation into looking for a former underworld associate looking for revenge.
The film rests entirely on Kruger's shoulders and she carries it lightly. Her initial exclamation of grief is a harrowing, primal yell, something that seems ripped from raw emotion and real human experience, rather than the culmination of years of endless acting exercises. She was well worth her best actress award at Cannes, though the whole cast is top notch.
After its devastating opening third, set in a Hamburg where it is perpetually raining, the film needs to reveal where it is heading and its destination is, unfortunately, a courtroom drama. I never really welcome the arrival of a courtroom in a movie narrative but at least this time attention is held by the oddities of the German legal system. There's no jury, a group of five judges oversee everything and the witnesses give their testimony with their back to the court, so they have to crane their head round to answer any questions and the barristers seem to be able to interject at any time. It's all bizarrely inefficient. Is this really how the German courtrooms work?
Everything else in this film is so organised and in its place. It's top level filmmaking but there is something distancing about the way it works its way through the tragedy gears. It's like the kind of “issue” drama that ITV might run over consecutive nights at 9.00, but much better.
Sharper readers will have noticed an 18 certificate attached to the film and wonder what level of depravity the film must contain to warrant that, given the levels of gore and mayhem that get waved through in 15 certificate movies. Well, after seeing it, you may still be mystified. The BBFC guidance says it is for Strong Bloody Images, and I assume that this is because the blood is connected with a suicide attempt. Still, it seems remarkably unfair and selective that this serious, unsensational drama should be so handicapped, especially as this is the second time this has happened to director Fatih Akin. A decade ago, his The Edge Of Heaven initially had an 18 certificate slapped on it for a pornographic image seen briefly on a background TV screen, though that was appealed and reduced down to 15. .
