There
is no need to beat yourself up if you do not recognize the Queens of the Stone Age
song Fatih Akin’s latest film takes its title from, but it is exactly the sort
of dark, hard-rocking tune a hot mess like Katja Sekerci would listen to. She
married her college dealer while he was still incarcerated. Yet, they both got
clean and went straight, becoming stable parents for their studious little boy.
It is a story that should have a happy ending, but instead an act of domestic
terrorism will leave her grief-stricken and starved for vengeance and closure
in Akin’s In the Fade (trailer here), Germany’s
shortlisted official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens today in New York.
Through
some economical editing, we are sufficiently invested in the Sekerci family when
a pipe bomb rips through the Sekerci travel agency and translation service,
killing her husband Nuri and young son Rocco. Being lazy civil servants, the
cops just want to chalk it up to a former drug connection. However, her
description of a rather Aryan-looking woman who left a shiny new bike unattended
in front of their store-front eventually leads to the arrest of André and Edda
Möller, two suspected members of the very real National Socialist Underground
(that is indeed how they choose to self-identify).
A
prosecution is soon brought against the Möllers, but Sekerci quickly finds she
and her late husband are the ones on trial. Unfortunately, her recent backsliding
drug use, brought on by extreme stress, plays right into the hands of the Mephistophelean
defense attorney. Even the devastating testimony of Möller’s horrified father Jürgen
cannot prevent Sekerci’s shaming and scapegoating. However, much of the
information that comes out during the trial will prove useful in a private
campaign for vengeance.
The
first two acts of Fade are tight,
tense, and downright devastating. Although Akin and Hark Bohm’s screenplay is
mostly about violence motivated by bigotry, it also offers some insight into
the pressures faced by recovering addicts. Unfortunately, the third act gets a
bit wishy-washy, perhaps because of worries the film might get tagged with the Death Wish-style revenge thriller label.
Yet, the original Bronson Death Wish is
far more nuanced than most people realize (granted, the subsequent sequels, not
so much).
Nevertheless,
Diane Kruger’s harrowingly performance is the engine that will probably drive
Germany to another best foreign language Academy Award. Her emotional wounds are
so palpably realistic, it is hard to watch her go to such dark places. She
could even be a player for best actress, unless the Academy wants to reward Meryl
Streep for speaking out against her old colleague Harvey Weinstein after the
extent of his horrid deviancy was already fully revealed.
Most
of the rest of the cast are mainly cardboard villains who exist to drive
sympathy for Sekerci or blandly shallow friends who are there just for the sake
of losing patience with her. The exception is the great Ulrich Tukur (John Rabe, The Lives of Others), who will
quietly but surely stagger viewers in his pivotal scenes as the decent Jürgen Möller.
