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From Amazon.com
Head-On, Fatih Akin's gritty drama, is like a great punk-rock song-- rough around the edges, but filled with heart. Cahit (Birol Ünel) is a middle-aged drunk whose apartment looks like the toilet in Trainspotting. Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) is a suicidal woman half his age, stuck at home with repressive relatives. They're two troubled Turks, adrift in Germany. A chance encounter at a psychiatric hospital represents a way out. If Cahit will marry her, Sibel can flee her family. They'll accept him, because he's Turkish. As for Cahit, he won't be alone anymore, left to mourn his dead wife and drink his life away. At first, things go as planned. Sibel moves into Cahit's dump and spiffs it up. The two live, eat, and party together, while continuing to see other people. Gradually, their marriage of convenience starts to resemble the real thing--until Cahit's violent tendencies get the best of him. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great film, by one of the best current film-makers,
By
This review is from: Head-On [Gegen die Wand] (DVD)
One of my favorite movies of recent years. Amazingly moving, bleak, sexy, funny, punky. Great acting, wonderful, simple photography, cool editing choices, and terrific music.An alcoholic, self-destructive Turk living in Germany agrees to marry young, borderline crazy, free spirited Turkish girl looking to get away from her grasping, tradition bound family. This simple plot leads to a relationship of amazing complexity, and a love story of joy, humor, and heartbreak. That's partly because filmmaker Akin approaches familiar situations with such a unique, playful and fresh eye, and partly because, along with his two lead actors he has created two unforgettable characters - rich in contradictions and confusion, like all of us. Nothing in their obvious personal experience is anything like mine. I've never been an immigrant, an alcoholic, or lost and self-destructive. Yet, with amazing ease I felt let into this world, and found the human connections underneath, the things we all share. Suddenly the differences in the human experience seemed much less important than the similarities. And, to me, this is the real genius Akin has shown in his last few films. By being so specific and real about a world, he, paradoxically makes it universal and accessible. I urge you to seek it out.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The clash of the civilizations on a Romeo + Julia level ...,
By FrizzText "frizz" (Wuppertal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Head-On [Gegen die Wand] (DVD)
"HEAD-ON" (Gegen die Wand) describes "The Clash of Civilizations" (Samuel Huntington) with the patterns of a ROMEO-and-JULIA-story: a ROMEO ("Cahit Tomruk" played by Birol Uenel) and JULIA ("Sibel Guner" played by Sibel Kekilli), influenced by the circumstances of our present age, are suffering under their identity-pain, caught in their specific story of woe: the differences between German and Turkish culture, between living in the red-light-area of big cities (Hamburg, Berlin, Istanbul), however born in small rural villages, tattered between disciplined middle class, drunken underdogs or fundamental Islamic believers beyond all social classes. In the beginning Romeo and Julia are in the protecting arms of a psychiatric hospital. But Cahit and Sibel prefer to break out. Unteachable they return to their red-light-districts. Back in their life of drugs and suicide, violence and one-night-stands there is a climax, that will render Romeo into a phase of heavy jealousy: He kills an admirer of his Sibel-Julia. Now he is in prison - and Sibel-Julia leaves Germany and escapes to Istanbul. At first in the helping hands of her middle-class sister (a hotel manager), Sibel again (the actress Kekilli is a former porn-star and plays it well) carries on her run-away-identity: back to the entertaining whiskey-bar harbor-area of Istanbul - not an inch better than the German Hamburg Reeperbahn-scene: drugs, sex, self-suicidal violence. Her Romeo, after his prison time, speeds via taxi to Istanbul - only to find his Julia deeply changed by a masquerade of middle class behaviour: no long hairs, intellectual glasses, no emotions, with a hidden, frozen soul, married to a middle class man. What he wished to find had gone. So he mournfully leaves Istanbul and crawls back into his very roots: a little Turkish town, where once he was born. An odyssey of finding oneself, though irreparable splinted up in the "Clash of Civilizations" ...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (38 customer reviews) 25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quite possible THE best movie of the year,
By R. G. Hall "Placebo Fanatic" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Head-On [Gegen die Wand] (DVD)
I first saw Head On at a small International film festival shortly after it's theatrical release, and fell in love with it almost immediately! This is by far the best move if the year, and a strong contender for my top 5 movies of all time. It's wide ranging appeal, from the intellectual international crowd who will drool over the interpersonal relationships of the Turkish-German main characters and the cultural aspects of two young, and slightly twisted people dealing with their overly traditional families, to a younger crowd who can appreciate this movie as simply a rocking kick-in-the-pants punk love story, I'm convinced that nearly everyone who sees this movie will love it!! 5 Stars, would give it more if I could! And let's not forget a shout out to Sybel Kekilli, who is one of the most beautiful women on the planet!
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hitting the wall . . .,
By Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Head-On [Gegen die Wand] (DVD)
For viewers of Hollywood films about marriages of convenience that turn into romantic comedies, this is not another one of those. Which is not to say that the kind of romance that develops between the two central characters doesn't have far reaching effects - living happily together ever after not being among them. Each in his way is redeemed by love, and the viewer is taken along on a long, long journey with many turns, often difficult to absorb. If anything, the film represents the painful conflict at the heart of many Turks living as expatriates in Europe.The "head-on" car crash that brings the two protagonists together is also about a whiplash collision of cultures that are not only separated by a great distance but also by centuries. It is not surprising that in these circumstances both characters are driven to extremes of behavior. That Cahit and Sibel survive the ordeals they have gone through is partly the result of what they begin to feel for each other, but also important is a return to Turkey where each finds some measure of personal integrity. The performances in this film are breathtaking. Birol ?nel as Cahit is a Turkish Klaus Kinski with the mercurial "good looks" of Mick Jagger. He is a stormy presence on the screen (and apparently on the set as well) and delivers a disturbing portrayal of self-destructiveness. Sibel Kekilli's peformance is equally astonishing. The DVD has no director's commentary (which would have been interesting), but it includes a number of deleted scenes and out-takes, and an informative and entertaining "making of" featurette by an intern who worked on the film. 15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Harsh, Gritty, Tough...Very Moving Film!,
By Grady Harp - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Head-On [Gegen die Wand] (DVD)
'Gegen die Wand' in German, 'Duvara karsi' in Turkish, or 'HEAD-ON' in English is an explosive drama written and directed by Fatih Akin, a movie that may be tough to watch, but a movie that has enormous impact. While other films have successfully addressed the particular problems that the immigrant Turkish community in Germany face, few have come as close to examining all sides of the on-going issues of displacement and the effects of familial dispersal in the face of a new culture.Cahit (Birol Ünel) is a thirty-something lost soul, drinking and snorting himself into oblivion over the loss of his beloved wife. He lives in a slum, spends all his time in sleazy bars getting beaten up for inappropriate behavior until one night he drunkenly drives into a wall (?suicidal?) and ends up in a hospital where he 'meets' Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), a young woman who has again attempted suicide as an escape from her strict family's prevention of her having a life. Hearing Cahit is Turkish, Sibel nonchalantly suggests they 'marry': Sibel's only way to escape her family would be to find a Turkish husband. Though grossly mismatched, the two agree to an 'open marriage', they satisfy Sibel's family, and move in together. Sibel cooks and cleans Cahit's hovel, and then goes out and sleeps around. This arrangement eventually causes problems for each of them and Sibel moves to Istanbul to escape the horrors of the life she has chosen. Once alone, Cahit is confronted with the reality that Sibel is the only path to salvation for his tragic life and the story proceeds - or rather speed drives - its way to a heartrending finish. The characters in the film are generally unlikable sorts, especially Cahit, but each actor does so well allowing us to observe the dreary world that faces immigrants in a fractured society that we end up having an amazing amount of compassion for their character creations. Director Akin makes this two-hour plus drama speed by with such solid purpose that it seems a short film. There is considerable nudity and the sexual encounters may be a problem for some viewers, but Akin's cinematographer Rainer Klausmann makes everything work toward the ultimate message of the film. An interesting touch is Akin's choice of weaving a chamber music group of a female vocalist with Turkish instrumentalists as a chorus to comment on the action and keep us mindful that, though the film for the most part is set in Germany, this is a very Turkish story! Grady Harp, March 06 |
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