Ali: Fear Eats the Soul Is An Impressively Powerful Portrait Of A Romance Attacked By Prejudice

And so my complete unfamiliarity with the works of iconic West German writer/director Rainer Werner Fassbinder ended this past week with my first-time viewing of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a feature film that became the de facto answer whenever I inquired to my friends about which of Fassbinder's movies I should watch first. Having now watched it, it's no surprise this was seen by so many in such high regard to the point that it was widely felt that this absolutely had to be my entry point into Fassbinder's work as a filmmaker! Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is an excellent romantic drama that provides a captivating humanizing portrait of two romantically entangled outsiders in West Germany.


This pair of outsiders consists of 60-year-old Caucasian woman Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira) and Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), the latter of whom hails from Morocco. Though both have led widely different lives, each of them feels alone in their current lives, as Kurowski is plagued by immense amounts of loneliness while Ali struggles to live with relentless instances of xenophobic and racially intolerant behavior by West German locals. Their two people who don't quite fit in into conventional West German society who happen to run into one another and from there a romantic spark goes off. They spend the night together and from there the duo becomes an inseparable couple that are massively devoted to one another.

Of course, the same people who pelt Ali and any other people of color in West German with narrow-minded insults now turn their gaze of disapproval towards this newfound romance. Kurowski becomes even more of a social pariah for being romantically involved with Ali, a demonstration of racism that's chilling to witness simply because of how writer/director Ranier Werner Fassbinder depicts instances of racism against Kurowski and Ali's relationship in such a casual manner. It's everyday people like Kurowski's neighbors, co-workers and landlord so convinced their intolerance is the unmoveable truth that they drop racist behavior or dialogue in a casual manner that spread cruel ideas demeaning, among many entities, interracial relationships. Fassbinder's writing recognizes that intolerance can emerge not just in over-the-top occurrences but in any circumstance, including in the most mundane of surroundings.

This exploration of how insidiously widespread intolerance impacts the disenfranchised is further helped in its effectiveness by how Fassbinder chooses to set the story in the then-modern day world so that the viewer can be confronted with stark depictions of racism happening in the world around them. Pity though that so much of this racist dialogue penned in the mid-1970's, like an off-hand mention of Arabs always bringing explosives with them, feels like it could have been ripped straight out of the mouths of any number of people, including the President of the United States, in 2018. Like this year's excellent BlacKkKlansman, Ali: Fears Eat the Soul uses gripping cinematic storytelling to confront modern-day racial injustices, and like that Spike Lee movie, it's able to confront such a horrific entity without sacrificing the humanity of its disenfranchised lead characters in the process.

All throughout Ali: Fear Eats the Soul we get to see how societies unwarranted hatred towards this romance impacts Kurowski and Ali, most notably in a scene depicting an attempt at a romantic outdoor meal that takes a heartbreaking turn when Kurowski, after previously turning the other cheek to all kinds of intolerance cruelty, opens herself up and reveals to Ali just how much this widespread bigotry hurts her. This powerful sequence is the apex of how masterfully Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is able to fill the screen with thoughtfully-realized characters that render oppressed individuals as the human beings that they are just as often it depicts the cruelty said oppressed individuals endure. The disenfranchised are not here just to be torn down, Fassbinder also wants to build them up and make the case for their humanity.

Much of this humanization comes from just how beautifully framed the romance between Kurowski and Ali is, God is the bond they share wonderfully realized. The characters themselves are so individually well-realized that you can easily see what they would become so infatuated with one another and Fassbinder's clear adoration for understated sequences allow for numerous quiet moments that let the audience see the two grow closer together. Such scenes are framed in an intricate visual style that makes use of impressive staging and blocking, the way Fassbinder arranges characters in a shot to convey certain ideas or character dynamics is absolutely impressive and I love he frequently creates a tightly-knit relationship between elements in the foreground and background. Every object in any given frame serves a purpose in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a clear example of the kind of thoughtfulness that permeates the whole riveting production. This one is an amazing introduction into Fassbinder's filmmaking as well as just a superb motion picture in its own right!