![]() ![]() One surprise is that, even though the film is set in present-day Germany, there’s never any mention made of ISIS or Al Qaeda. It goes on like this, with seemingly not a beat out of place - a smooth cascade of basic, expertly applied genre satisfactions. When Katja suddenly charges at one of the attackers, amid the commotion of the trial, it’s easy to imagine that you might have done the same. The hard-nosed defense attorney questions everything, despite the fact that the sneering suspects appear guilty as sin even the man’s father is convinced his Hitler-adoring son did it. At this point, In the Fade settles into what appears to be a standard-issue courtroom drama, albeit an effectively acted and written one. FADE IN FILM TRIALAfter “Family,” the next, “Justice,” follows the suspenseful and, at times, infuriating trial that takes place after a neo-Nazi couple are accused of the bombing. (She won a well-deserved Best Actress award at Cannes in May.)īut the film has three sections, and each part seems to assume a different set of genre conventions, a different set of emotional cues. Akin holds nothing back, and Kruger, starring in a German film for the first time in her career, brings the grief and anger and pain to life - never overdoing any of it, yet refusing to submerge it. In the most emotionally brutal scene, she has to hear a medical examiner calmly and diligently offer a detailed, point-by-point accounting of her dead little boy’s injuries (hair burned onto the scalp, arm severed, eyes melted in their sockets). She cries herself to sleep in her son’s bed, wondering aloud about how scared he must have been as he lay on the floor, dying. She has to deal with cops asking questions about her husband’s religion and politics and shady past. She has to deal with accusations from both her parents and her in-laws, who are themselves drowning in anguish. ![]() She has to go coffin shopping, for two sizes the sight of a casket in the children’s section shaped like a toy truck is surreal and soul-destroying. Every terrifying, unbearable beat of Katja’s emotional journey is rendered in acute detail. Its first half is emotionally harrowing, as Katja Sekerci (Diane Kruger) discovers that her Turkish husband, Nuri (Numan Acar), and young son, Rocco, have been killed by a bomb placed outside Nuri’s Hamburg accounting office. In the Fade, at some points, seems to be edging toward one of those latter cases, but a second viewing was key for me I now believe the film might be one of Akin’s best. But he can also veer headlong into the simplistic and cliché, and his flops can be mighty. As a fellow member of the Turkish diaspora, I sometimes find he totally nails the perspective of the insider-outsider, the out-of-body experience of belonging to different worlds, even in stories that aren’t ostensibly about Turks. I’ve had a complex relationship with this director’s work over the years. ![]() And yet it also hit me hard in ways I didn’t quite expect. It dares to tell us that all along, we might have been watching an upside-down world.ĭespite his international art house pedigree, Akin has always had a populist streak, and In the Fade embraces convention even more than his previous work. FADE IN FILM MOVIEIt calls into question the perspective we’ve been given, and thus undercuts - albeit subtly - what at first might have seemed the more familiar elements of this movie about a woman’s quest for justice after the deaths of her husband and son. I’m not giving too much away to say that it’s an image of an upside-down sea, mirroring in some ways the seaside setting of the final scene. The most important shot of Turkish-German director Fatih Akin’s In the Fade might be its last - a key to unlocking the film. Pathé Distribution, Warner Bros Entertainment Germany, Camera Film, Cinéart Netherlands B.V.Diane Kruger in “In the Fade” Magnolia Pictures Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and Medienstiftung NRW (DE), German Federal Film Fund DFFF (DE), Federal Ministry for Culture and the Media (DE), German Federal Film Board FFA (DE) international title:ĭE, CZ, FR, PT, GR, NO, ES, FI, LT, PL, SE, HU, NL, IT, DK, RO, UK ĭiane Kruger, Numan Acar, Jessica McIntyre, Ulrich Brandhoff, Siir Elogluįatih Akin, Mélita Toscan du Plantier, Marie-Jeanne Pascalīombero International, Warner Bros Entertainment Germany, Corazón International, Macassar Productions, Pathé Films After the time of mourning and injustice, here comes the time of revenge. Katja's life collapses after the death of husband and son in a bomb attack. ![]()
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