In the Fade

$19.50 for a ticket? Check. Small but comfortable screen? Check. Foreign language film? Check. Choc bomb? Check. Hairy companion (Liam) alongside? Check. Ahh, this must be the Luna in Leederville. Just like old times. Actually, it appears they're adding some screens in the building next door. Good news for the independent cinemas. Hope it all works out.

Anyway, In the Fade, literally 'Out of Nowhere' but the title comes from a Queens of the Stone Age song from 2000. Josh Homme, singer, etc wrote the soundtrack for the film. The background of the film is juicy, abhorrent ground. It's based on the true story of 10 murders in Germany between 2000 and 2009, committed by a group of right-wing neo-nazi cunts called the National Socialist Underground. This from the Junkee website:

The movie is based on the true story of killings that were allegedly carried out by the National Socialist Underground between 2001 and 2009. German Public Radio film critic Patrick Wellinski remembers those years.

"The police [were] investigating murders that occurred all over Germany," he says. "Migrants were killed, nine: one Greek and eight Turkish men were killed. And they didn't even have the idea that all the murders were connected, that the all murders were perpetrated by terrorists, by right-wing terrorists. And after this was uncovered, the whole society was like in shock: politicians, you know, citizens, the media. The media had a very crucial role ... and I think this is a shock which still lingers on."

For filmmaker Fatih Akin, who was born in Hamburg to a family of Turkish immigrants, those murders felt personal. He says, "I was very angry when all the truth came out, when we knew that the police [were] wrong and the media was wrong and the public was wrong by blaming the victims to be involved in some criminal activities just because they have backgrounds, you know. That [is] the fact which bothers me more than the essential killings."

Easy to see why Fatih Akin wanted to make this film. And it's a pretty powerful film at that, completely dominated by Diane Kruger's performance. She plays a wife and mother trying to deal with the grief of losing her husband and son in one of the aforementioned attacks. The film revolves around her attempts to find justice or revenge, whichever comes first.

Akin is a fine film-maker. He adds just the right amount of melodrama without over-doing it and keeps things on a relatively simple trajectory. There's nothing glamorous or even innovative here, but what we get from Akin is solid, unfussy story-telling. And it's hard to take your eyes of Kruger in this - it's a happy case of a director knowing what kind of talent he's got working for him and molding the film as such. Apparently, that's a form of symbiosis called mutualism. I've just looked it up - disregard the fact that Kruger and Akin are of the same species and you get my drift. All right, it's late and I'm still trying to get my head around the ball-tampering shit that went down in South Africa. Please excuse me.


See also:

The Edge of Heaven (2007), another calm essay by Akin and, a tentative link but, The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008) by Uli Edel for another German terror trial.