In the Fade
IN THE FADE, not rated, in German with subtitles, Center for Contemporary Arts, 3 chiles
Danger is everywhere in this world. Stepping off a curb in modern-day Hamburg, Katja Sekerci (Diane Kruger) and her six-year-old son Rocco (Rafael Santana) are nearly run down by a speeding van running a light. But she snatches him out of harm’s way, dropping the boy off at the storefront office of her husband Nuri (Numan Acar), a Turkish immigrant who runs an accounting and travel firm, while she takes the afternoon off. When she returns, they’re both dead, blown to bits by a terrorist bomb.
Who did it? Why? And will justice be served? The answers to these questions are not long in coming, as Katja deals with her grief, her parents, her in-laws, and the police investigation. The cops want to focus on her husband’s immigrant status, the possibility of ethnic gang violence, and Nuri’s record (the opening scene is their wedding in prison, where he’s doing time for drug dealing). “It was Nazis,” Katja says adamantly. And it turns out she’s right.
Fatih Akin, the Turkish-German writer-director (he wrote the screenplay for 2007’s The Edge of Heaven) constructs this drama in three acts, which he introduces by name: “Family,” “Justice,” and “The Sea.” Once the authorities have confirmed Katja’s hunch and arrested the suspects, André and Edda Möller (Ulrich Brandhoff and Hanna Hilsdorf), a young, immigrant-hating neo-Nazi couple, the film moves into its courtroom section. Here Katja must endure graphic testimony about the bombing from forensic experts and the harsh, brutish courtroom style of the defendants’ lawyer ( Johannes Krisch), as well as the intolerable presence of the murderous pair themselves. Her own lawyer, Danilo (Denis Moschitto), an old friend who had represented Nuri on his drug rap, is calm, kind, and reassuring in promising a conviction. It seems to be a plaintiff/ defendant proceeding, with the state represented not by a prosecutor, but only by a panel of judges.
You’ll have formed your own opinions as to where this quest for justice is headed long before the court proceedings wind up. The outcome will take us on to Act 3, on the beaches of a Greek island, where the plot barrels toward its conclusion.
The movie has its ups and downs of clarity and purpose as it grapples with the rise of right-wing terrorism, but one thing that never wavers is the searing intensity of its central performance. Kruger (Inglourious
Basterds) won Best Actress at Cannes this year with her portrait of a free-spirited woman devastated by tragedy, hounded by bureaucracy, and driven by revenge. The film is Germany’s submission for the Foreign Language Oscar. — Jonathan Richards