What 'Ali: Fear Eats The Soul' is really about

An analysis of Ali: Fear Eats The Soul by Rainer Werner Fassbinder 

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul is a bittersweet film about the destructive ways in which informal norms such as racism and age affects relationships and health of those who violate these norms. The film's central characters are Ali and Emmi, a Black Moroccan guest-worker and an older White domestic worker who fall in love following a chance meeting. Their cultural differences are challenged by society at every turn. Ali holds things in and doesn’t express his feelings. Emmi, who does express her feelings openly, acts as the safety valve in the relationship. Ultimately, the strain of society’s cultural expectations causes Ali and Emmi to drift apart and Ali's stomach ulcers to worsen. 

Emmi's own children become hostile when they find out that she is involved with a Black man. Her son calls  her a whore and kicks in the television set. The employees of a restaurant stare at her and Ali. The neighborhood grocer refuses to serve Ali. Her friends avoid her and make racist comments about Ali. He invites some friends over and Emmi’s neighbors call the police about their music being too loud. Throughout all of this abuse, humiliation and rejection, Emmi cries for both of them but Ali is a rock. 

The second half of the film begins with the racist grocer making up to Emmi after his wife talks some economic sense into the man. One of the female neighbors that made racist remarks earlier in the film, comes to Emmi smiling and needing a favor and Emmi helps this friend, so relieved to be accepted after being rejected for marrying Ali. Next, Emmi’s racist son stops by for a favor. His demeanor is completely different from when she told him she was marrying Ali. This son’s wife had taken a part-time job and they needed someone to keep their kid. Again, Emmi is relieved and glad to do this for her son who’s obviously using his mother’s need for acceptance to his advantage. She forgets about Ali’s needs and this is when he begins to express his feelings. He asks Emmi to make a north African dish called couscous. This is his favorite dish she used to make for him. But now that she feels accepted by those who once rejected her, she won’t make couscous anymore. Emmi is the only tenant in her building with a man and she puts Ali to work for her friends. When a couple of these friends visit her, one of them—in the presence of Ali—makes a racist remark about his good hygiene. Ali has on a T-shirt and one of the women makes a comment about his physique. They walk around him feeling his muscles. This is the last straw for Ali whose hurt is now obvious. Without the safety-valve provided by the comfort Emmi gave him or the emotional outlet he had through her, Ali begins to show the effects of racism. 

He escapes this pain by having sex with Barbara. She is nice to Ali and cooks him couscous, his favorite dish. She’s young, beautiful, well-built and lives in a nice apartment. By contrast, Emmi is old, not very attractive, and lives in a crumbly low-rent apartment. But Ali loves her and most, importantly, Emmi shares his pain with him. But now, in order to fit in with her society she conforms by going along with things she knows are wrong. At 57:54 minutes into the film, Emmi’s friends refuse to eat lunch with her because of Ali;  at 1:16:00 into the film, Emmi and her friends refuse to eat with a woman who earns less money than they do. 

Despite the physical comfort Barbara provides, the ulcers in Ali’s stomach are becoming worse and when he comes home late knocking on Emmi’s door, he doubles over in agony on the floor. Emmi mistakes his condition for being drunk and ignores it. At this point of the film, Emmi has become a true German. But when Ali stays out for a number of days, she goes looking for him and finds him at work. His co workers make cruel remarks about her age, one referring to her as his’Grandma from Morocco.’ 

Later, at the bar, Ali gambles away his money. He slaps himself in the bathroom mirror. Emmi, as she did in the beginning, drops by the tavern and Ali asks her to dance. He apologizes for having sex with another woman. Then he falls to her feet groaning. Later, we find out that he has perforated ulcers caused by stress. On the outside, Ali seemed fine, even under the racism he and Emmi faced throughout the film. But in reality, stress and the fear has eaten away his soul. Sitting at his bedside and holder his hand, Emmi cries as she did before Ali became ill, when she had cried for them both and they shared their pain with each other.