:: IFFK 2008 ::

Two years ago or so, I had just begun watching films.I don’t mean the normal highly marketed commercial regional ones to which I’ve been exposed to since childhood. But those films which really speak of nonheroic people in some way. It was the time I was charmed and shocked by the beauty of the visual language. Classical ones were the first I got my hands on. Some Tarkovsky, some Bergman. They were beautiful. But again, they seemed to be of another time, another place, another level of human beings. At the very time I was thinking, where are the films of today, what’s happening today, I got my hands on this film. It is not easy to explain how I felt after watching Head On (Gegen die Wand, 2004). I was intrigued for sure.

Love, lust, drugs, music. And then, separation, pain, lovelessness. It’s a trip that goes from one life to another all different yet similar in many ways. When someone hits a bare tall wall head on, just careless enough not to stop his car, we know him. We’ve been there. She wants to get out of her home. She tries all weird ways to do that, including proposing to a tasteless much older man for marriage just because he is Turkish. We know her. The use of Turkish traditional music escalates the emotions the film wishes to explore.

But what exactly makes such a film important is the way it perceives and judges relationships. The film is very much out of the normal patriarchal perception of life and love. And therefore, it is able to tell you, people desire, people love, hate, hit and hit on each other. People experiment with life which should not be judged using any tools of traditional morality. That makes the film very genuine to these times. There are several moments in Head On which re-examine the usual good/bad, love/hate perspectives, such as the moment when the hero’s friend tries to comfort the heroine even after he thinks she absolutely destroyed his life. It was a moment the film grew from guilt and accusations to love and understanding a fellow being.

Fatih Akin’s direction is remarkable. He won many awards for this film including the Golden Bear for the best film at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival.