Fatih Akin, German film-maker of Turkish descent, is best known for
making devastating dramas that gleam with quiet intensity. His culturally
hybrid or transnational cinema often piercingly explores the human condition
within the alleged cultural boundaries. Through eclectic mix of genre
templates, Akin zeroes-in on themes of migration, identity crisis, mourning,
grief, love, and death. What’s interesting about Akin’s works is his
ability to evoke visceral reactions or potent range of emotions by playing with
viewers’ preconceptions about the rigid constructs of race and gender. Fatih
Akin reached the peak of his directorial powers with intricately structured
narratives in Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007). The director’s stab
at comedy in Soul Kitchen (2009) was a welcome change. But I didn’t like The
Cut (2014), a disappointing drama on Armenian Genocide, and Tschick (2016), a
pretentious buddy adventure flick. However, In the Fade ('Aus dem Nichts', 2017) marks Fatih
Akin’s return to ferociously compelling narrative. Although executed with
precision, the film does feel a bit unconvincing. Yet Akin’s brilliant
formalism combined with a bravura performance from German-American actress
Diane Kruger (her first role in a German production even though she played a
German character in ‘Inglorious Basterds’) makes In the Fade an engrossing
revenge melodrama.
Using minimal visual choices and precise details, Akin opens
the movie by conveying the love and family life of Katja (Diane Kruger) and
Nuri (Numan Acar). A smartphone captures a man in a suit gleefully walking in a
prison yard, accepting the cheers of his inmates. Later, he marries a
blonde-haired woman with rings tattooed on their fingers. Nuri is a convicted
drug dealer, but a fully reformed man after marriage. Few years later, we see
the couple still madly in love and they have a smart, adorable kid as a result
of that. The question of how these two individuals came together might be
haunting at the back of our mind, but their love for each other (expressed
through simple gestures of intimacy) seems genuine and utterly convincing.
Katja takes her son Rocco (Rafael Santana) to his father’s
office, in order to spend some time with her pregnant sister. Nuri is now
running a tax consulting firm (in a storefront office), which specializes in
aiding immigrants. From the glow in Katja and Nuri’s face, it’s clear that
Rocco is physical evidence of their life’s transformation and transcendence.
Katja says her goodbyes, without knowing it would be her last time seeing them.
After returning from visiting her
sister, Katja is shocked by the sight of police
barricades near her husband’s office. The authorities say Nuri and Rocco are
killed in an explosion, caused by a makeshift bomb made
out of fertilizer, diesel fuel, and nails. Furthermore, she learns that their
bodies are so badly damaged that they can't be identified
without a DNA test. Earlier, as Katja heads out from her husband’s office, she
sees a young German woman (Hannah Hilsdorf),
leaving an unlocked bicycle on the street in front of the office. Katja
believes that the cold-blooded murders are orchestrated by a neo-nazi group.
But as if the emotional devastation of losing her family isn’t enough, the
authorities insult her memory of Nuri by investigating his past links with
drug-dealing immigrant mafia. The police suggest Nuri might have relapsed and
renewed his underworld connection. Katja’s Kurdish in-laws vehemently place the
blame on her. Her own mother thinks the worst about Nuri. Burdened by crushing
grief, Katja unapologetically uses drugs (a habit which initially introduced
her to Nuri), which also falls under the scrutiny of the investigators.
Nevertheless, the real culprits are arrested soon: Hitler-loving neo-nazis Edda
and Andre Moller (Ulrich Friedrich Brandhoff). Katja attaches herself as co-plaintiff and
seeks the help of lawyer friend, Danilo (Dennis Moschitto). Will she get
justice? And even if she did, will that stop her hitting rock bottom with
grief?
Fatih Akin delves directly into the heart of the matter,
dividing his narrative into simple chapters – ‘Family’, ‘Justice’, and ‘Sea’. He
elegantly moves through these varied settings with an incontestable
effectiveness. Akin includes few elements of American revenge thrillers,
starting from the false leads to the drawn out suspenseful sequences in the final
portion. While the first two chapters firmly attunes to emotional reality of
Katja, the third chapter tries to teeter away from realism and embrace
melodrama or certain kitschy notions. As the film’s end text says, the
narrative is based on real-life, notorious murder spree of Kurdish and Turkish
businessmen by neo-Nazis in Germany in the early 2000s that went unsolved for
years. For the majority portion of its running time, ‘In the Fade’ stands as an
impressive (universal) study of grief, loss, love and hatred. To suddenly turn
it into a narrow commentary on Germany hate crimes through
the underwhelming ‘Hollywoodized’ third act, the movie falls short of being one
of Akin’s career best. The end text only
seems to assuage the total emptiness we feel from the bland finish. It tries to
infuse an impetus to the final act where there’s actually none.
In the Fade’s disappointing final act
is all the more troubling because up to that point (until the courtroom
sequences), Akin’s aesthetic flourishes and Diane Kruger’s grief-eaten facade are
compulsively watchable. In one of the more memorable visual flourishes, the
camera spins over Katja’s bathtub as it gradually reveals her slit wrists which
turn the water into red (cinematography by Akin regular RainerKlausmann). Akin does his best to keep the courtroom
scenes dynamic. He deftly shoots all the action going around the courtroom, yet
keeping Katja’s emotions as the center of focus. The first chapter that
entirely revolves around Katja is filled with her expression of consuming
anguish. In the second chapter, she is kept at the periphery as the killers’
defense attorney, Haberbeck (Johannes Krisch) takes a cruel line of approach to
water-down the nature of his clients’ racist views. Nevertheless, Akin includes
crisp, effective shots to convey Katja’s simmering rage (which we share too);
an approach that retains emotional power despite slow, methodical
sifting of evidence. In one haunting scene, an expert witness casually
describes the myriad of wounds in Rocco’s mangled body. Akin uses split focus
shots in this scene which place Katja in the foreground,
showcasing how the expert’s words are intensifying her inner pain. More
interesting is the very final scene, when Katja emerges from a muddled,
unfocused shot which clearly states her line of action.
The narrative is also rife with symbolic
treatment of things and simple gestures, starting from Katja wearing Nuri’s
glasses, the snow-stacked unused trampoline, the samurai tattoo, Rocco’s toy
car, etc. Equally good are the use of different color palettes: after
saturating the initial portions with darkness, Akin moves to sanitized white in
the courtroom scenes and ends it up with scenic sun-kissed shots (the shot of
Kruger walking in the sunny wheat field, her hair matching the color of wheat
radiates with benign beauty). Ultimately, the film belongs to Diane Kruger’s
worn-out, fury-ridden face. She dutifully immerses herself into the role,
whether her character faces emotionally grueling insults or silently
contemplates her anguish or dives headlong into action. The mere close-ups of
Kruger’s make-up-less face sharply demonstrate Katja’s psychological
disintegration than any expressive dialogues (Kruger’s Katja brought her
the ‘best actress’ award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and as expected it
set a precedent for her getting snubbed at the Oscars).
In the Fade (105 minutes) is a visually
impressive revenge/courtroom drama that’s ultimately too muddled to deliver an efficient
commentary on the normalized xenophobia within European sociopolitical structures.
However, it mostly works as a meditation on grief, loss and senseless violence
thanks to an emotionally wrought performance from Diane Kruger.
Trailer
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