Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's masterful "remake" of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955) contains images that are simultaneously dazzle the viewer in their simplicity and break hearts in their sadness. How Fassbinder manages to do this without once stepping over the line into sentimentality testifies to his stature as one of the most important filmmakers of the postwar era.

In this Frame of Reference, Ali and Emma (El Hedi Ben Salem and Brigitte Mira) have just been married and are out for their honeymoon dinner. Ali is an African Muslim and Emma is a middle-aged German widow. This image leaves no doubt as to how society is going to view their union, nor does it leave us with much optimism for their relationship.

The shot is simple enough: it's really just a wide two shot. But the key to the shot is the doorway. It's huge, it's dark, it's got tons of molding, it serves as about as looming a boundary as you could ask for in a restaurant, and it creates a tonal difference between the room the camera is in and the room in which Ali and Emma sit. Their room may feel warmer, but it is also really far away and seems small. They're also all alone in there. Even though two chairs await guests, we get the sense that no one will be joining them for dinner, perhaps not even a waiter.

Imagine how much more optimistic this shot would be if the camera were in the room with Ali and Emma. As Fassbinder frames it though, they are boxed in, put away, confined by their forbidden relationship, doomed to forever be removed from society, looking on from a distance. This composition technique is called limited space: placing a character in a frame within the frame. The choice to show not only the entire doorway but also the wall above it intensifies this feeling. Not only are the walls closing in beside them, but they've also got a huge weight coming down on them. It seems that if Fassbinder could have found a way to elevate the floor in Ali's and Emma's room, he would have. He has to settle for including the gorgeous floor and polishing the heck out of it, which is great because even though the reflection of the two empty chairs reaches to the other room, these shadows only go to prove that Ali and Emma are never getting out.

To top it all off, Ali and Emma are looking at us expectantly. It's as though they are waiting for our approval, like they've seen us enter the restaurant and are hoping we'll come and sit with them. Until that camera moves, though, we're stuck in the point of view of the rest of German society, which scorns them. For the rest of the film, all we can do is pity Ali and Emma as the rest of the world destroys their relationship.

This pity is the genius to Fassbinder's work. By subjecting his characters to the cruelty of the world, he awakens emotions in us that we often don't indulge: compassion, heartache, yearning, melancholy. We emerge from his films as more complete human beings because he has made us (for lack of a better word) feel so much for the most unfortunate people by forcing us to see how their lives are guided by the same emotional impulses and needs as our own. The best part of it all is that he does this while also making the world appear strange and beautiful at the same time, and after seeing his films, it's hard to imagine that the world was ever any other way.