Head-On

After all the positive things I’d heard about this film from my many Turko-phile friends, I was surprised at how standard the story was: A widower agrees to marry a young woman so that her family will stop annoying her. However, it is a marriage in name only: The young woman just wants a cover for her partying and slutting around. At first, the “marriage” is tense, then the two fall in … wait, I don’t want to spoil anything! But there’s much more going on here than an extended sitcom plot. Director Fatih Akin and cinematographer Rainer Klausmann (who also shot the brilliant Downfall) have created a nearly perfectly realized example of visual storytelling. Though the script is generally strong, in spite of a stock character in the male lead, the real strength of this film is in the silent sequences. They’re informative, beautiful, seductively rhythmic and shockingly precise. If someone told Klausmann to go and film the annual dictionary-reading contest, I’m sure he’d make it seem like Triumph of the Will. This is well worth seeing, as is anything else Klausmann ever shoots from now on.