Dir.
Fatih Akin, 2004, Germany/Turkey, 120 mins, subtitles
Cast: Birol Unel, Sibel Kekilli, Catrin Strieback, Guven Kirac
A multi-award winning collision of Turkish neo-realism, Head On is a gritty, dark, and often heart-rending tale of tragedy and doomed love. However, as in real life, set amongst the pervading gloom are genuinely touching comedic moments, with two lead characters whose raw performances touch the soul.
In modern-day Germany, Cahit (Unel) is unable to deal with the pain of losing his wife and his descent into a world of drugs and alcohol ends with him finally facing his anguish head-on - by deliberately driving his car straight into a brick wall.
Unfortunately for the world-scarred Cahit, he survives and awakens to find himself in a neckbrace at a psychiatric unit, with a doctor telling him that that 'you can put an end to your life without killing yourself.'
The timing couldn't be better for alongside him at the unit is Sibel (Kekilli), a young, beautiful, and decidedly eccentric failed suicide. But Sibel realises that they have more in common than their unsuccessful attempts to leave this mortal coil - like her, Cahit is Turkish.
Sibel's vivacity has been her downfall. Her Muslim family have curtailed her freedom and, having now attempted a fake suicide bid, is a disgrace. She realises that her only salvation now is to find a Turkish boyfriend and marry him. Cahit seems the perfect solution.
Having survived one head on collision, Cahit succumbs to another. Maybe it's the words of the doctor; maybe he sees the spark of defiance in Sibel against life's odds; maybe he can help save this girl and bring meaning to his miserable life - whatever the reason, Cahit finally agrees to marry her.
What follows is something like a bleak re-telling of Green Card, with the star-crossed non-lovers first marrying and then slowly falling in love. But this is no Hollywood movie. This is a seedy Europe , peopled by characters with complex human emotions, driven by anguish and the flipside of love, the emotion of jealousy. With a title like Head On there cannot be anything other than one almighty crash.
What drives this film is the combined pain and interaction of the two lead actors. Indeed, the character of Cahit was built around Unel, a long time friend of Akin's and a man whom he describes as celebrating "poetic self-destruction, like Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison". Unel, dark, drawn and with black, haunted eyes that refuse to flinch, delivers a hypnotic performance. His weathered face and rigid intensity epitomise the mise-en-scene - the steel greys and metallic blues; a murky slight underworld; shady nights of loveless sex and danger lurking in unlit alleys. And yet it is his futile attempts to rediscover his humanity that make him most human. In Sibel he sees hope, but has his symbolic death at the film's beginning actually lead him into hell rather than a rebirth? Is hell of our own making and can we ever escape? And in trying to save Sibel has he, in fact, condemned her?
Whilst the grim realism is evident, the film allows us to ponder greater questions, whether we can ever defy what life has dictated for us, and if fate ultimately has the final laugh.
What pleases most about Head On though is the way in which the director has used the title to demonstrate what happens when different worlds collide and the ensuing reaction. Besides the literal crash, and the lively fun-loving Sibel pitted against the morose Cahit, with the resulting explosion of emotions, there is also the clash of culture - being Turkish and Muslim in a western society, and older traditions fighting against the new. Indeed, while this is a tale of our time, there is the stylistic device of colour-drenched inserts of a Romany band singing melancholy Turkish traditionals at key points in the film. These were included by Fatih as a way of subdividing the film into musical acts and hearkens back to the style of classical stage tragedies. The film seems to muse on the dark poeticism of real life, a world in which Shakespeare himself said "all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players."
In establishing life imitating art imitating life, Akin has indeed created a contemporary yet universal story. It's conclusion is uncomfortable viewing.
Jean Lynch
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