Justice cannot be done to this extraordinary movie that won the best screenplay award in Cannes by a few paragraphs of comments. For one thing, its content is so exceptionally rich that receptive audiences will find themselves thinking about the movies days, maybe even weeks, after watching it. Many compare it to "Babel" but that is superficial. Unlike in "Babel" and many similar movies where threads connecting the three separate stories are haphazard, the lives of the six protagonists in the three stories of "The edge of heaven" are truly interwoven. And there are no melodramatic contrivances and twist like the ones that drag down "The kite runner" a few notches.
While different audiences will focus on different things (political conflict, caltural clash, sexual orientation, remorse and atonement, dispair and hope), this is first and foremost three father-son and mother-daughter stories. German father-and-son pair has Ali the common, earthy retired father and Nejat educated college professor son. Their relationship could have been at least civil and cordial had not the old man's sexual pursuits become increasingly irritating to Nejat. Also German are Susanne and Lotte, in a situation that is not at all uncommon, mother's tradition values against somewhat rebellious daughter. The third pair is Turkish mother Yeter who is very easy to sympathize with, a woman who wants so much for her daughter to escape the vicious cycle of poverty and poor education that she goes to German to become a prostitute to finance Ayten's education back in Turkey. The cruel irony is while Yeter's secret is harmless, Ayten's is not: she is a member of a militant underground resistance group.
The way these three pairs are connect is quite complex but not it any way contrived. It will do both the writer and the audience an injustice to try to describe the award winning plot in the context of IMDb user comments. Suffices to say that the two main connecting points are that Yeter/Ali and Ayten/Lotte. In the first case, after providing sex service to Ali for a period of time, Yeter comes to live with him as his woman. In the second case, Ayten, trying to seek political asylum in Germany, encounters Lotte and they become lovers. These two situations, expectedly, meet with disapprovals from Nejat and Susanne respectively. Two accidental deaths set off a chain of complicated events that see the remaining four characters converging in Turkey.
The story is told in a simple, straightforward fashion that set European films apart from staple Hollywood. "Simple" here is complimentary, as you'll understand after having indigestion from artificial, formulaic Hollywood treatments (e.g. blood seeping out from a body on the floor to make sure that the audience understand that its occupant is dead). This does not mean that cinematic montages are not used. It's just that they are not over-used and are used only at the right time. One example is when Susanne is in a hotel room in Turkey at the beginning of the third "chapter" (there are written chapter titles on the screen at the start of each). Another is the voice-over announcing refusal to Ayten's asylum request overlapping with Lotte's argument with Susanne before leaving home for Turkey.
Spoiler warning notwithstanding, I have already said too much about the movie that is much better left to be enjoyed by the audience as the stories unfold.
While different audiences will focus on different things (political conflict, caltural clash, sexual orientation, remorse and atonement, dispair and hope), this is first and foremost three father-son and mother-daughter stories. German father-and-son pair has Ali the common, earthy retired father and Nejat educated college professor son. Their relationship could have been at least civil and cordial had not the old man's sexual pursuits become increasingly irritating to Nejat. Also German are Susanne and Lotte, in a situation that is not at all uncommon, mother's tradition values against somewhat rebellious daughter. The third pair is Turkish mother Yeter who is very easy to sympathize with, a woman who wants so much for her daughter to escape the vicious cycle of poverty and poor education that she goes to German to become a prostitute to finance Ayten's education back in Turkey. The cruel irony is while Yeter's secret is harmless, Ayten's is not: she is a member of a militant underground resistance group.
The way these three pairs are connect is quite complex but not it any way contrived. It will do both the writer and the audience an injustice to try to describe the award winning plot in the context of IMDb user comments. Suffices to say that the two main connecting points are that Yeter/Ali and Ayten/Lotte. In the first case, after providing sex service to Ali for a period of time, Yeter comes to live with him as his woman. In the second case, Ayten, trying to seek political asylum in Germany, encounters Lotte and they become lovers. These two situations, expectedly, meet with disapprovals from Nejat and Susanne respectively. Two accidental deaths set off a chain of complicated events that see the remaining four characters converging in Turkey.
The story is told in a simple, straightforward fashion that set European films apart from staple Hollywood. "Simple" here is complimentary, as you'll understand after having indigestion from artificial, formulaic Hollywood treatments (e.g. blood seeping out from a body on the floor to make sure that the audience understand that its occupant is dead). This does not mean that cinematic montages are not used. It's just that they are not over-used and are used only at the right time. One example is when Susanne is in a hotel room in Turkey at the beginning of the third "chapter" (there are written chapter titles on the screen at the start of each). Another is the voice-over announcing refusal to Ayten's asylum request overlapping with Lotte's argument with Susanne before leaving home for Turkey.
Spoiler warning notwithstanding, I have already said too much about the movie that is much better left to be enjoyed by the audience as the stories unfold.