Storyline In 'Gegen die Wand' Cahit, a 40-something male from Mersin in Turkey has removed everything Turkish from his life. He has become an alcoholic drug addict and at the start of the movie wants to end it all. Sibel a 20-something female from Hamburg wishes to please her Turkish parents yet yearns for freedom. She has had her nose broken by her brother for being seen holding hands with a boy and yet she can not break her mother's heart and run away. She too attempts suicide and she first approaches Cahit there at the Hospital. Sibel asks Cahit to marry her, as she believes this to be the way out of her parent's house. She promises Cahit that their relationship will be like roommates, not like a married couple. The film follows Sibel and Cahit as they get married, become closer and eventually fall in love.
Cast: Birol Ünel
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Cahit Tomruk
Sibel Kekilli
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Sibel
Catrin Striebeck
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Maren
Meltem Cumbul
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Selma (Cousine)
Stefan Gebelhoff
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Nico
Francesco Fiannaca
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Mann am Tresen
Mona Mur
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Stammkundin Zoe Bar
Ralph Misske
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Patient 1 (Psychiatrie)
Philipp Baltus
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Patient 2 (Psychiatrie)
Hermann Lause
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Dr. Schiller
Karin Niwiger
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Kassiererin (Psychiatrie)
Demir Gökgöl
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Yunus Güner (Vater)
Cem Akin
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Yilmaz Güner (Bruder)
Aysel Iscan
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Birsen Güner (Mutter)
Monique Akin
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Kundin im Friseurladen
Opening Weekend: €24,264
(Netherlands)
(5 September 2004)
(19 Screens)
Gross: €432,956
(Italy)
(31 October 2004)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
The first German film in 17 years to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
Goofs:
Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers):
The psychiatrist at the beginning of the film tells Cahit about a song by the band The The containing the line "If you can't change the world, change your world". The actual quote (from the song "Lonely Planet", included in the album "Dusk") is "If you can't change the world, change yourself".
Quotes: Cahit:
I'm sorry I ran off before. Sibel:
That's OK. Cahit:
I'm a mental case, you know? Sibel:
[Kisses Cahit]
User Review
Splashy chronicle of a generation in revolt against tradition (worth watching)
Rating:
Head On (Gegen die Wand), winner of the top prize "Golden Bear" at the
2004 Berlin Festival, is occasionally interrupted by a panoramic shot
of a singer performing in front of a small Turkish orchestra on the
banks of the Bosphorus across from Istanbul. It's a simple, at first
incomprehensible, little device that provides punctuation and clarity
amid the chaos and melodrama that otherwise dominate this story of a
Turkish man in his forties and a twenty-year-old Turkish woman who meet
in a psychiatric facility in Germany when both have attempted suicide
-- he by crashing his car into a wall ("head on"), she by slitting her
wrists. Cahit Tomruk (the sublimely attitudinizing Birol Ünel) is a
purposeless rock 'n' roll loving boozer with a dead-end job collecting
bottles at a club, and Sibel Güner (the wiry, intense Sibel Kikulli) is
a young woman with conservative Turkish parents who wants to escape
family pressures.
Both are total drama queens and both are German-born Turks. Cahit is
more assimilated; his Turkish isn't even good. Sibel figures if he'll
agree to marry her that'll get her away from her family. This is the
irony of their situation: she must capitulate to the conventions of
their culture in order to gain some freedom from it, and he must
capitulate to society in order to get some sense of purpose. So they do
get married -- he somehow passes muster with the stuffy family,
baulking all the way -- and they eventually even fall in love. Her joie
de vivre is exactly what he needs, and she's essentially just as wild
in her way as he is in his -- but his nihilism and violence continue
unabated and so does her promiscuity, and his brutal attack on one of
her one night stands leads to jail and scandal, which in turn forces
her to go to Istanbul. While he's incarcerated she writes him
sustaining letters from Turkey -- their relationship, like the staid
orchestra on the Bosphorus, is a stable element amid the surrounding
chaos -- and after jail he goes to Turkey to find her.
To say this turbulent, brightly colored, lurid story is a "realistic
picture of Turks in Germany" would be a total distortion of the truth.
But somehow the situation of Cahit and Sibel reflects the unstable
moods this half assimilated, half alien population experiences, and
however melodramatic and unresolved the saga is, the two main
characters are very well realized. The actors are strong, especially
Birol Ünel, whose charismatic brooding and ravaged good looks make him
irresistibly watchable. Both feel real to us -- he sardonic and gloomy,
she dangerously spirited and full of life-- despite her dramatic
suicide attempts, of which there's more than one. The story, as much as
the images through which it's told, is both dark and vibrant.
We need the Brechtian, Greek-chorus device of those orchestral
interludes on the Bosphorus, though: without an occasional break the
drama and darkness would be too much. We also need to go with the flow
of this movie, and not expect it to be more polished or more organized,
or even better looking, than it is. It looks unlike most films we're
seeing now, but that doesn't mean the cinematographer hasn't done the
best possible job. What it has is life, tumultuous with incident,
strong personalities, and a milieu we've not seen before. There's also
a loud, authentic-feeling rock-pop soundtrack and a cunning contrast
between Cahit's punk-rock sensibility and Sibel's love of good grooming
and dance. Arguably the movie is too long, but that length gives it the
feel of a saga, which it must have, because that's what it is, the
confused, tawdry epic of a generation. Like all first films by a whole
subculture, it has a lot to talk about. When Sibel and Cahit discover
they still love each other, after everything, it's the Turkish Germans
discovering that they have self-worth. The last scenes are open-ended:
this generation's future is anybody's guess.
Seen in Paris 17 September 2004. Opening in the US in January 2005.
First German film to win a Golden Bear in Berlin in eighteen years.
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