A film more provocative than convincing, about important issues

Rage (Wut) is a film made for German TV about Turks in Germany. It was written and directed by a man born in Turkey who has lived in Germany most of his life and studied filmmaking there, just as the younger winner of the top prize in Berlin in 2004, Fatih Akin of Head-On (Gegen die Wand), was trained in the arts in Germany but identifies with the Turkish minority. While Akin's approach is complex and ironic, Aladag treats the German-Turkish conflicts schematically and simplistically.

Can (Oktay Özdemir)-- pronounced like "John" -- is a cocky Turkish youth with bad teeth and a ponytail who has it in for Felix Laub (Robert Höler), a "nice" German boy who plays the cello and lives in a big modern house with a swimming pool. Felix has apparently bought some dope from Can, so though Can, surrounded by his little posse, steals his fancy sneakers and roughs him up and extorts money from him on a daily basis, Felix tries to conceal these things from his parents and goes on thinking Can may be his "friend." Felix's father Simon (August Zirner) is a university philosophy teacher (soon to be promoted to full professor) who dates his young girl students, and his mother Christa (Corinna Harfouch) sells real estate and is having an affair with one of Simon's best friends. Simon finds out about the stolen sneakers and the daily extortion and gets pretty angry.

The practical question is: what do you do in such a situation, since any action against Can and his gang might lead to reprisals? Felix may be wise to take the beatings and give the money, but he's in a dangerous situation. And Can, of course, is full of rage, and that's why tormenting Felix provides him with so much pleasure. Needless to say, there are other ways of expressing discontent with the kind of social inequities Can experiences, like growing up and trying to campaign for one's rights. But Rage simply exists, without hopeful solutions, within a context of the failure of Germany's "guest worker" program and the roiling discontent of the large Turkish minority of which both Can and Felix are victims.

Rage skewers middle class liberal German families that try to be "nice," aren't overtly racist toward the large Turkish minority, and turn the other cheek when they are attacked, due in part in Simon's case to what his son calls his "Hitler complex." The film, which ignores the fact that Turks are more often the victims than the attackers, suggests the practitioners of such liberalism as the Laubs' are spineless and sissified; and it even questions Simon's masculinity, or at least his physical courage, though not Felix's. Simon fails again and again to control Can and late in the picture almost commits an act of terrible cowardice, but still ends by exacting revenge. Presumably there are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Simon's philosophy, and these include knowing how to give someone "a good hiding," as the subtitles somewhat primly put it. He eventually gets Michael (Ralph Herforth) -- who he is soon to discover is his wife's current lover -- to deliver the "hiding" to Can for him. Can's behavior is so provocative (as is the film itself, at the cost of subtlety and even believability) that one wonders if they have court orders in Germany. The Turkish guy not only is a danger to Felix, but enters the Laub house repeatedly and menaces and abuses them and breaks things.

But before matters have reached that point Simon goes to Can's apartment and asks his father, an older man, to make Can return the sneakers. Can brings them right away, in a bag, but this is when he first enters the Laubs' house and prances around abusing and mocking them. One wonders if Aladag hasn't spent some time studying the films of Michael Haneke. The climactic sequence at the end in which Can gets truly nasty seems as if it may owe a good deal to Haneke's 1997 Funny Games. In that, a pair of punks torment a family and make them play sadistic games with each other. Can doesn't need a sidekick: he does just fine on his own. The young Oktay Özdemir deserves credit for playing Can with great boldness and conviction. On the other hand the ethnic German principals are, as written, cardboard figures. Christa is a stiff, bitchy wife, full of innuendoes about her husband's spinelessness; Simon indeed seems incredibly wishy-washy, and poor Felix is a ridiculous good boy, polite to his parents, but equally eager to be Can's "friend" and too easily taken in when Can with obvious mockery says they are "brothers." Felix inexplicably has no real friends.

When Simon has reached his limit with Can, he manages to get him arrested for drug dealing, even though Felix was one of the customers he spied and in the police station Felix refuses to bear any witness to Can's criminal activity. Generations are in conflict, even though Felix and Simon don't fight. Can's father disowns him and Can weeps when he realizes this -- his sole moment of weakness.

Rage makes its points economically. The screenplay is swift-moving and pointed. The film tends to seem crude and exaggerated; there is no nuance in it. Conversely it is enormously effective in its clear aim of making viewers uncomfortable and illustrating the titular rage of young Turks.

Though there's no indication that Can's dignified, older father (Demir Gökgöl) is really poor, it's also clear that he's less well off than the Laubs. (Apparently the reason an associate professor has such an impressive spread is money from the couple's parents.) Aladag has stated that for him Can is a hero, but this is a sad thing to know. Can is a prancing bully. Akin's anti-hero in Head-On, Cahit, also wants to destroy himself as Can ultimately does, but the reasons are more complex, and in the performance of the immensely charismatic Birol Ünel, Cahit is funny and appealing. Two different approaches, each perhaps with its validity. If Aladag's Rage arouses worthwhile debate of issues Germans have been unwilling to speak of, it will have had a positive value. But it feels like a film that would mostly just polarize or repel people.

Shown as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2007. The director was present for a Q & A after the screening.

SHOWTIME
Tue, May 1 / 08:45 / Kabuki /

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.