Nonureva Really Surprised!

Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

theseventhstooge I first encountered Fatih Akin in college. I was taking a class on German Film on my way to a concentration in German. Akin is easily one of my favorite filmmakers and Gegen die Wand is a major reason why. The story in Gegen die Wand is engaging, serious, funny, dramatic, and everything else you would expect from such a great movie. Don't be fooled, Gegen die Wand is intense as well covering such subjects as honor killings, immigration, cultural assimilation, drug abuse, and murder. Sibel and Birol bring their characters of Sibel and Cahit to life. In a epic first film, Sibel Kekilli shows herself to be a force to be reckoned with. While Birol Unel shows why he is one of Germany's best actors. Meanwhile, Fatih Akin demonstrates his amazing filmmaking abilities in a film that is personal.

CountZero313 Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with? asked The Buzzcocks. A song filled with verve and energy, it could easily have played over the end credits here.Sibel is so oppressed by the demands of her traditional Turkish family that she is suicidal. Recovering from a failed attempt on her own life in the mental ward, she meets Cahit, a drunken, disillusioned Turkish immigrant losing his heritage identity to a German one he neither understands nor aspires to. Sibel proposes marriage, seeing in Cahit a chance to live freely while presenting a veneer of conformity to her family. What Cahit sees in Sibel is one of the questions the narrative strives to answer. When Sibel's brother asks Cahit if he loves Sibel, the answer he gives dooms him.Birol Ünel is the hang-dog Cahit, a man who expects nothing and gives as much in return. In Germany he is a Turk, but back in Turkey he finds common ground only with a taxi driver in their shared German experience. Sibel is Juliet and Lady Macbeth rolled into one, or perhaps just another young woman looking to get her jollies before settling down to domestic mediocrity. The oppression she seeks to flee is genuine enough - an honour killing is threatened and then botched.The films strengths are the performances from the leads, strangely vital and life-affirming in a tragedy, and the visual storytelling and economy, especially in the end. Years are compressed and the choices that Sibel has made, that ultimately seal her fate, are relayed through mise-en-scene and not dialogue. Happiness, the ending suggests, would be too much to bestow on this pair, but a sense that each is better for meeting the other provides sufficient succor. Violent and vicious in places, and fraught with self-loathing, Head-On is in its essence a great love story about the redemptive power of wanting to live for another.

gavin6942 Cahit Tomruk (Birol Unel) and Sibel Guner (Sibel Kekilli) are immigrant Germans who live and work in the port town of Hamburg. In a bid to help Sibel break free of her family (which strictly adheres to Turkish customs, religious and otherwise), the couple decides to marry. But straitlaced families are just part of the problem; Cahit and Sibel must also counterbalance ancestral roots with their new life in a western democracy.The film starts with a very surreal opening with a band performing a song about unrequited love on the beach in a foreign land. This band returns a couple times throughout the movie. Why? Perhaps to remind us of the foreign nature of Turkey, or simply to maintain the surrealism.This is a Turkish-German hybrid, with a forced marriage to boot. We might be familiar with American stories of people marrying to become citizens. But here, for Americans, we have a double foreign atmosphere -- Germany, with Turkish immigrants. A foreign culture for most of us, with an even more foreign culture mixed in. The story is a universal, timeless one, but in a whole new setting.Some social topics such as sexual intimacy and fidelity are brought up, that I think bear discussion. The wife insists on sexual promiscuity, but refuses to sleep with her husband. The husband, on the other hand, sees the marriage as real and does not pursue other women, though he receives no affection at home. Ironically, the person from the more strict culture has a permissive moral code, and the liberal partner is strict.I enjoyed seeing the game of Rummikub show up, but have nothing further to say about it. (Rummikub was invented by Ephraim Hertzano, a Romanian-born Jew, who immigrated to Mandate Palestine in the early 1930s. Does this have anything to do with the story? Probably not.)Things get worse around the middle of the film, and this is where the original title ("Into the Wall") begins to make sense. I will not get into it for fear of ruining the plot, but this is when the film goes from good to great. I think the third act is somewhat weaker, but seeing the two adapt to married life (with their own unique versions) is a visual treat.

colour-me-kubrick Here is a rare story that explores the darker aspects of Love. It can save you from self destruction, it can redeem for certain misgivings, it can provide a sense of comfort and closure but it can also lead to a path of jealousy, anger and self destruction. We learn this through our protagonists who are disinterested, disillusioned, narcissistic and suicidal. In a way made for each other and we explore their journey.In St. Pauli, Hamburg, the alcoholic, drugged and hopeless German with Turkish roots Cahit Tomruk (Birol Ünen) lives like a pig in a small dirty apartment and survives collecting empty bottles in the night-club "Der Fabrik". One night, he gives up living, and hits his car against a wall. However, he survives the crash and is sent to a clinic, where he meets Sibel Güner (Sibel Kekilli), a younger German Turk, with suicidal tendencies. Sibel is the younger daughter of a conservative Turkish family, and proposes a fake marriage to Cahit, in order to permit her to leave her family; in return, she would share the rent of the flat, and she would cook and clean the place, and they could have independent lives. Cahit accepts, but while living with Sibel, he falls in love for her until something unforeseen happens.The movie is based on Turkish immigrants in Germany with their rather orthodox cultural background colliding with the liberal German society. However, this disconnect that Sibel feel is more peripheral to the main love story. There are some magnificently shot sequences. The car crash with "I feel you" by Depeche Mode playing in the background is one of the best I have seen. Never has the impact seem so real, never has the "moment" of madness so beautifully captured. Faith Akin has a lot to offer to this medium.A unique love story that is truthful and breaks every possible cliché.