Gegen die Wand

I think I've mentioned it in previous posts, when I really like a film I tend to watch it multiple times. Not immediatelly, but with a 1-2-3 years gap. Indeed there are few films that I consider remarkable and that I've watched only once. Well, until last Tuesday, Head-On / Gegen die Wand / Contra la pared, was one of them. I had watched this amazing film in FIC Xixón in 2009 (I indeed mention it here), when the festival held a Fatih Akin retrospective.

The film quite shocked me and delighted me then, and it has done the same 12 years later. I've watched it now on my tablet, during a bus trip coming back from Toulouse. It's funny, cause tablets did not even exist (at least not for mainstream use) back in 2009, and back then I would not have expected to have a "secondary hometown" in France. In summer 2009 the world had been terrified about the possibility of a pandemic, the H1N1 influenza virus, well, in the end it took 11-12 years for another pandemic to come and turn our world upside down...

The story in the film is relatively timeless (the culture shock and generational conflict in families of recent immigration, the passion for life and for dead, the need for freedom and pleasure, the painful indiference for anything, self-hate, love... are elements that were here 20 years ago and will be here in 20 years time), and the fact that the film (shot in 2004) has no scenes (or hardly any scene) where mobile phones, computers, tv sets... play any role, helps the film independent of a specific year-decade (it would be different if you were confronted to several Nokia phones or CRT TV's...) . One thing that makes it look a bit "2000's" now is the tribal tattoos that both Sibel and Meren (Catrin Striebeck) wear right above their beatiful asses...

I like it when artists put elements of their lives in their creations. That's what Fatih Akin, a German guy of Turkish descent (but Western culture) does with his films, and furthermore it's also what the georgeous Sibel Kekilli does with her character in the film (that as a sort of wink is also called Sibel). In her real life Sibel is a German woman of Turkish descent (and Western culture) that has also gone through problems in her life due to the clash between her (Western) culture and the "less evolved" culture of her ancestors. In 2006 she said "I have experienced for myself that both physical and psychological abuse are regarded as normal in a Muslim family. Sadly, violence is part of the cultural heritage in Islam"... wow, I love this woman! :-D

Sadly, it seems that the real life of Birol Ünel, that plays the main male character in the film, had much elements of convergence with the film. Birol died in 2020 after having struggled with alcoholism for many years.

I won't tell you the plot here, just read it in wikipedia, I'll just say that though the story skillfully blends hilarious and tragic moments this is mainly a drama. Anyway, though there's so much sadness in the film, there's also much hope, same as there is much self-destruction and much desire to rebuild, there's apathy for life, but it ends up being overcome by passion...