The Edge of Heaven

I'm the kind of person that can watch the same film a lot of times if I liked it enough, and continue to enjoy it on every new occasion. It's something that for whatever the reason I've done quite a few times (one cause for this is that before a trip I like to watch films set in that place, and as there's a bunch a European cities that I need to visit again and again every so often...). On the other side, there are films that really delighted me years ago but I have not found the moment to revisit again. The Edege of Heaven is one of those works. I watched it on one local culture house in Xixon quite a few years ago, and I really loved it. At the moment I had not seen any other film by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatih_Ak%C4%B1n and was unaware of his importance as one of the best European film makers of the last years (he's of Turkish descent, but was raised in Germany and adopted Western values, so he's as European as me or my grandparents).

I've watched it now in a quite different setting, over different train trips between Toulouse and nearby cities (Bordeaux, Cahors, Auch), following a similar pattern (try to study some French and when I get tired switch to some film watching on my smartphone). Whatever different the setting has been (add to it that over the years your 'internal settings' also evolve), the output has been basically the same, this is a gorgeous movie. The plot is really original, a story of searching and never finding, but just by a few millimeters. 2 countries and 2 families which members fail to find each other while crossing their lives without noticing. It's a really beautiful story, it makes no sense that I explain/spoil it here, you just must watch it. Just will add that I pretty much like the title, I find it quite appropriate, indeed for me the characters spend the film on a thin edge separating Hell from Heaven, so "The edge of Hell" would have been equally correct.

I love one sequence almost at the end, when the Turkish guy explains a desolate German mother the myth of the sacrifice of Ishmael (or Isaak) (basically this same story exists in Christianity and Judaism). The German woman asks the guy "did you ever ask your father what would he have done?" And the guy replies:

"He said he would even make God his enemy in order to protect me¨