Kruger balances humanity with pain and anguish
Movies are what-if fantasy machines, prodding us to imagine what we would do in various permutations of love or hate. In the Fade, the latest from German director Fatih Akin, presents a most extreme example after Katja (Diane Kruger) loses her husband Nuri and sixyear-old son to a terrorist bombing. It’s an empathy gut punch.
Leaving aside the loss, her road isn’t easy. The police immediately question her Kurdish husband’s political affiliations and religious background. And when Katja takes drugs to dull her pain, it raises the spectre of whether the murder had some connection to his former life as a drug dealer.
She has her own theory based on a blond woman who left a bomb-laden bike outside her husband’s office: “It was Nazis.” The film, which includes a lengthy trial and its aftermath, will eventually prove her right, though that won’t necessarily make things easier.
Kruger’s performance anchors the film; she appears in every scene, and her journey through grief and into a kind of numb desire for justice won her the Cannes best-actress prize when the film premiered there last year. It also won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film of the year.
Akin, who is of Turkish descent, buffets his central character with unexpected gales. Her mother-inlaw delivers a short, stinging rebuke at the funeral, while the father of one of the bombing suspects proves to have unexpected reserves of humanity. Yet regardless of the circumstances, we never lose sight of Katja’s own decency, even under layers of pain and anguish.
The film’s three-part structure ends with a twist that will raise at least two questions in most viewers. Would I do this? And do I want her to? You may find yourself hoping Katja succeeds in her quest to get past what has happened.