Ali: Fear Eats The Soul And The Marriage Of Maria Braun By Rainer Werner Fassbinder Movie Review

Shot in the 1970’s, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and The Marriage of Maria Braun by the same director, the films reflect on the intercultural and interracial relationships and the society’s reaction to the phenomenon. Rainer Werner Fassbinder makes his audience face the uncomfortable dilemma and choose the side to support. Though the contemporary audience may not find anything bizarre in the storylines offered by the director, it is important to remember that the film were shot in the 70’s, and their audience was basically the society Fassbinder reflected in his movies. From the perspective of the era, the plot must have been shocking and discreditable but it managed to resonate the society and attract the attention to a controversial issue. Both films by Fassbinder made history and convey the message of the challenged the romantically involved people need to overcome for the reason of the society’s boundaries that it created and keeps on creating till nowadays.
The Marriage of Maria Braun is a drama whose action takes place amidst the historical events namely the World War II and the postwar period. The relationships of a woman with three different men would not be so complex, had they not happened in the course of the difficult period of the German history. The story starts from the true love – Maria marries Hermann but he needs to get back to the front, and she is soon informed he is dead. Here, the director demonstrates the audience that the woman feels helpless and to find comfort, she starts the relationships with an African-American soldier, one of the visitors of the bar where she works. The audience surely judges her but the director provides her with the character traits and utterances that make the audience feel some kind of affection for her.
The scene where she is caught with her foreign lover by her husband demonstrates the complexity of Maria’s character – she still stays firm and powerful. For this scene, Fassbinder chooses the deep focus and the subdued lighting through the window shutters to create the atmosphere of taking the thieves in the mainour. The contrast between the coziness of the room’s interior and the uneasiness of the atmosphere creates the resonance of the current situation. After Hermann slaps Maria’s face, the audience and the characters are lost in silence – only Hermann’s breathe-ins and breathe-outs while smoking can be heard. The silent scene is interrupted by Maria’s sudden strike of the lover with a bottle.
Unlike the cheating scene, the final one symbolizes the couple’s reunion. The two are now rich and the interior sparkles with wealth. The director does not intend to make it tense so he lightens the things up with the help of the hardly audible sound of the radio. The characters are relaxed, and the audience does not expect anything outstanding. The interaction between the characters in the scene lacks sincerity and tenderness – after so many years, the two people still do not know each other. To highlight the distance between the husband and wife, Fassbinder creates the numerous factors that distract them from one another – whether Hermann is eating, or Maria changes the outfit, or the executors arrive, the couple always stays apart. Unlike the previous scene, the final one is shot during the daytime to add casualty to it. What meets the eye of the attentive audience is the director’s intentional preparing the audience for the future course of events: in the cheating scene, Maria and Bill are enjoying each other while Hermann is already in the shot – in the doorway, in the deep focus. In the final scene, the audience sees that after lighting the cigarette, Maria blows off the fire but does not turn off the gas. In both scenes, the director does not hide what is going to happen and prepares the audience. The scenes demonstrate the evolution of the characters and their feelings. The complexity and tension are felt in both of them while the motives are different.
During her trial, Maria mentions that he was fond of Bill but she still loves her husband – she does not expect anyone to understand her complex feelings but as a woman, she has a right to explain nothing. The self-confidence and sincerity reflected in her words make the audience believe that she successfully combines the sexual freedom with the marital fidelity. Maria seems to be that kind of person whose feelings can be equally big and sincere towards several people at a time. Though such behavior is usually considered in the worst way, Maria is natural in her openness to new relationships and expressing her feelings – whether physically or emotionally. Her sincerity persuades the audience in the authenticity of such bizarre human nature as the one represented by Maria.
Fassbinder chooses the man of color for Maria’s lover and this can be determined by his wish to put Maria in the most discreditable position – the society is going to judge her even more now that she chose the African American. Maria’s fall is exaggerated by the fact that she is a German woman and her nation was fighting against all the nonwhite races. The fact that the action takes place around the World War II dramatizes Maria’s story and creates all the conditions to disrespect her from the position of the society.
Just like Maria in The Marriage of Maria Braun, Emmi in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is forced to overcome the same difficulties connected with the society’s disapproval of her romantic involvement with the Moroccan man who is also younger than her. Here, the whole conflict of the film is based on the interracial relationships, and the director explores the issue by putting the characters in the most uncomfortable situations.
Through the carefully framed shots, Fassbinder creates the proper visual reflection of the larger themes in the film. He shows that the issue is not particularly about Emmi and Ali – it is about the German society’s rejection of the “guests”, the foreigners, “other” people. The Germans can be positive about Ali until he is just another guest worker but if he dares to get romantically involved with the German woman, his behavior cannot be acceptable.
Furthermore, Emmi is now the abandoned woman, and her colleagues have no wish to have anything in common with her. The best example of Emmi being outside the society is the scene where she joins the small group of women during the lunch, and they leave her alone in an emphatic manner and go to another place not far away thus demonstrating their attitude. Later on, the director shoots the identical scene in which Emmi is already the part of such small group of women who abandon another woman.
Fassbinder’s films made the cinematographic history for both the artistic and intertextual codes. Creating the uncommon storylines, the director managed to frame them in the most visually attractive manner. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and The Marriage of Maria Braun are the films that offer the audience the new type of woman, and this type was unknown for the German society of the 70’s. By changing the outfits of the female characters from more reserved to more bright and highlighting their female sexuality, the director demonstrated the characters’ evolution – the women are able to go through all the hardships and fight for their happiness. Though the contemporary society does not face the issues described in the films to the same extent, there are still things to reflect on.