Fassbender followed Douglas Sek's method of using popular melodrama as a tool to dissect social hypocrisy and contradictions in his filmmaking in the middle and late stages of his creation. Fear of familiarity is more desperate than all class, racial and social issues.
“The simpler the story, the more real it is, and the more engaged the audience will be. If art stimulates the possibility of further discussion, then we think it reaches the extreme.” Fassbender followed Douglas in the middle and later stages of his creation. • Seck teaches his method, using popular melodrama as a tool to dissect society's hypocrisy and contradictions. [Fear Eats the Soul] and Seike's [Bitter Rain and Spring Breeze] share the basic outline of a middle-aged woman and a young man who meet, fall in love, and encounter social exclusion from different social classes. But in addition to these broad commonalities, the two are still separate works, not only because the heroines of Seck and Fassbender are rich widows and cleaning women, but also because of the sad and happy endings of their respective endings. The problem is, Fassbender purely created a perfect world of self-image after the teaching of Godard and Seck. He poured the elements of self into the film with more concern than these two teachers, and used the camera to allegorize his own life. .
The tone of [Fear Eats the Soul] is softer than in previous works, and the unequal relationship between givers and manipulators has been an important theme in Fassbender's previous films, but here, the two protagonists, Amy and Ali is surprisingly kind. They work hard for each other and take care of each other. They can almost be regarded as one of the few perfect characters in Fassbender's oeuvre. Amy has a maternal quality, which makes people feel that she can turn into a pool of spring water in a special atmosphere, and Ali is also so innocent and kind. Although we are well aware that their relationship will undoubtedly have more entanglements, the audience will definitely fill in his own reality, and the audience will be able to find their own variability in the film.
Fassbender is not good at large ideological layouts, and it is not his responsibility. He just borrows the Arabic proverb "fear eats the soul" to inform the audience of his purpose: people's fear of the unknown or abnormally unfamiliar state of affairs is more All class, race and social issues are even more desperate. At the beginning of the union between Amy and Ali, most of the pressure came from the oppression of outside neighbors, relatives and colleagues. Their energy was focused on working together to resist foreign humiliation, but they forgot to face up to their real problems. Loneliness, vulnerability, and rift create a metaphysical concept of fear that eats away all idealism. This is the place where Sec did not write much in [Bitter Rain and Spring Breeze], but was bluntly spoken by Fassbender. Most people are often in a state of mind that can neither be alone nor coexist with others in their daily life. At the end of the film, Amy hopes to solve this problem with the method of "when we are together, we should be kind to others". However, Ali's stomach attack shatters her fantasy. In the end, Ali is lying on a hospital bed, and the picture rarely begins to move dynamically. The camera is pushed toward the mirror that reflects the mirror image of Amy caring for Ali. The ironic bright-colored wash cup is gradually pushed out of the frame by the lens, echoing the opening scene of the film. The inscription "Happiness and happiness do not always go hand in hand" appearing together with the muddy water pool, and the bright elements of hot passion representing happiness will eventually be squeezed out of the frame. The camera here seems to be an allegor of fatalism, arranging everything.
Indeed, the fate of the camera is a consistent thread throughout the film. While Fassbender's other works such as [The Bitter Tears of Bertina] [Beware of the Holy Prostitutes] prove that he is a master of mobile photography, the deliberately frozen stills or clips in [Fear Eats the Soul] are more Let us know the metaphor of blocked emotion from the static picture lacking movement, and read the implicit irony of German society from a wider level. Amy and Ali are often seen in the static framed space, 1.33: 1's frame is often overwhelmed by the cramped spaces of bars, apartments, restaurants and stairwells, a particularly striking example being Amy and Ali celebrating their marriage registration in a fancy restaurant, the duo in the depths of the scene being stereotyped The door frame of the restaurant is tightly locked, and the neat and solemn symmetrical environment can't accommodate the poor and happy newlyweds. The camera is ruthlessly staring at the two people in the depths of the field, and the two are ignorantly staring at the distance represented by the camera. Solidified, Amy and Ali, as representations of society, are mercilessly split in a static posture. On another level, the rare moving shots in static pictures are obviously more purposeful. Every deliberate movement of the camera and the picture is an allegory. Whenever there is a scene where Amy and Ali are in the same frame, the camera will carefully deploy all the ability to predict the future. The first vertical rise shot in the film is very abrupt. It is the clip of the morning after Amy and Ali’s first overnight stay. According to the previous practice, Fassbender will inevitably scan the couple on the horizontal scheduling track. , but the fact is that he used a set of symmetrical clips to deal with the scene where the two people were separated from each other. Then, the two people's emotions that did not coexist but completely tacit understanding were cut off by the unexpected rising shot, and the camera moved to the neighbor on the second floor. With his head sticking out of the window, it turned out that the neighbor was maliciously scrutinizing the difficult couple from a height. Here, the extension of the two-dimensional picture only emphasizes the vertical movement, because the sense of stability created by the symmetrical static picture editing will inevitably be broken, and what breaks it is the public opinion from the high place that slowly moves. An equally impressive moving shot is of Amy and Ali talking in an open-air inn, surrounded by gaudy bright yellow tables and chairs, and pub staff huddled in a corner watching the intermarriage pair with strange eyes. (This shot also pays homage to a scene from Fassbender's first short film, The Urban Wanderer, where the protagonist is also alone in a park full of picnic tables). The outdoor space where Amy and Ali were supposed to be wide, but they were surrounded by bright-colored tables and chairs to the point of overflowing. Emotions are brewing step by step from a deep perspective. Obviously, the camera is in a fable again, showing that Amy and Ali face more inner fears.
The actor Ali, the actor of this film, is also Fassbender's same-sex partner in reality. [Fear Devouring Soul] is Fassbender's last gift to Sarin. After filming this work, Fassbender Decided to break up with Sarin because Fassbender knew their reliance on violence and alcohol would only hurt each other more. After the breakup, Sarin stabbed three innocent people in a bar. After the incident, Sarin had to flee in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, and eventually hanged himself in a prison in southern France in 1977. Fassbender learned of Sarin's death in 1982, the last year of Fassbender's life. Amy and Sarin in the movie could not be truly happy because of internal and external pressure, and Fassbender and Sarin in real life could not be satisfied because of each other's love hurt and play. Fassbender never lets his characters off the hook because his films are self-portraits of his life.
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