Video Analysis of 'Ali: Fear Eats The Soul'

This is an analysis of Rainier Werner Fassbinder's film Ali: Fear Eats The Soul

Emmi (Brigitte Mira) is a 60 year old housecleaner who works all day and lives by herself. She is White, German, and her parents were Nazis. One day, Emmi enters an Arabian Bar seeking shelter from the rain and, there, meets a 39 year old Muslim  named Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). Taking a dare from his friends, he asks the old woman to dance. He buys her a Coke. Then, he escorts her home. She invites him in for a drink. He's a guest-worker from Morocco, single, and shares a room with 6 other men. And, like Emmi, he is also very lonely. They become friends and eventually lovers in a most unlikely relationship. 

Fassbinder drew inspiration from Douglass Sirk's 'All That Heaven Allows'  and shot this film in just 2 weeks! This is a very tender little movie by one of my favorite directors. 

My scene-by-scene plot/ analysis of 'All That Heaven Allows' starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman

This is a scene by scene analysis of Douglass Sirk's film 'All That Heaven Allows'.

Title 1 (00:00-11:50) (11:50) Stop at “What a horrid thing to say, Mona.”

Cary attends a dinner where she is subjected to criticism for wearing a red dress. 

My viewpoint

The 1st shot of the film shows a clock on a church tower beside an overhead view of a New England suburb. The leaves are turning indicating the season and the theme of the film which is not death but change going with the fact that Cary, whose mourning her husband, is going to fall in love with another man again. We are also introduced to other elements of the plot that foreshadow elements later in the story. At around the 2:47 point on the DVD, Cary invites Sara to have lunch but Sara is attending a dinner and doesn’t have the time. She arranges a date for Cary. This establishes the film’s theme of other people running Cary’s life. Ron is finishing up some yard work for Cary and when she invites him to coffee and lunch, he accepts—this contrast between Sara and Ron—she, being too busy and he, not being too busy—sums up the entire film. This also is an illustration of what Alida says later about her and Mick getting off life’s merry-go-round. The opening shot of the clock and the neighborhood is also a metaphor for people living their lives on the clock. 

In this scene, we meet Cary’s children who remind her of what’s acceptable and not acceptable for a woman her age, expressing their approval of whom she chooses to date and expressing disapproval of a low-cut dress she wears out on a date. Cary is bombarded in this scene by what others like and don’t like. The dinner party is full of gossipers. 

This film makes excellent use of technicolor. The colors or deep and saturated. Criterion did a great job on this movie as they always do. 

Title 5 (16:32—20:49) (4:17) Stop at “It was probably thrown there because the pieces were missing. Better leave it.” 

Ron finishes up some final landscaping on Cary’s property and tells her that he plans on giving up the business to raise trees full-time. He invites her to his place to show her some trees and she accepts. 

My viewpoint:

Ron’s place is out in the woods with nature away from civilization and Cary’s world of materialism. Cary is taken by an old mill there, an old mill that hasn’t been used in a while. This mill, like Ron, is sturdy but empty because he doesn’t have a steady woman. The broken tea server is a metaphor for his heart which some woman has broken. Only love can fix it which is why he tells her to leave it. 

Title 7 (26:20-33:39) (7:19) Stop after Ron opens bottle with his teeth

Ron introduces Cary to his friends, Mick and Alida who also have a nursery business. Mick and Alida live a simple life like Ron and Cary wants to know why. Alida, Mick’s wife, explains to Cary how Ron helped them to get out of the rat-race. 

My viewpoint:

It is no coincidence that both Ron and Mick are in the nursery business. This society is so materialistic that we tend to connect our happiness to how much stuff we own. The message in this scene is that the closer we get back to the basics and nature the happier we become. All of Mick’s friends in this scene have occupations that have something to do with nature: 

• There’s Manuel, the lobster catcher
• There’s Grandpa Adams, a beekeeper and artist
• Then there’s Mrs. Edna Pidway, head of the Audubon Society and bird-watcher

Also notice how easily Cary is accepted by Ron’s friends who aren’t judgmental and contrast this with how Ron is rejected by Cary’s society.  Ron’s friends are diverse while all of Cary’s friends are lily-white.

Title 10 (47:49-57:34) (9:55) Stop as Ron and Cary leave party

Cary announces to her children that she is going to get married to Ron Kirby and they aren’t happy about it. What will everybody think of her marrying a gardener? Cary takes Ron to an evening dinner to meet her friends and things don’t go well there, either. 

My viewpoint: 

Cary’s society rejects Ron in direct contrast to how his society accepts her. First, her children are more concerned with what people think of Cary’s decision to marry Ron than they are with her happiness. At the party, Ron is treated as a novelty and a gold-digger. There is a lot of class discrimination here and it is easy to see from this scene and others how this film inspired Rainer Werner Fassbinder to make Ali: Fear Eats The Soul 19 years later.

Title 12 (59:46—1:06:38) (6:52) Stop after Ron and Cary break up and he sits on stair

Ned tells Cary that he won’t accept Ron as his father or come to the wedding; Kay blames an argument with her boyfriend on her mother’s decision to marry Ron. Cary calls off the wedding.

My viewpoint:

Cary is confronted with making a choice between being what her society expects her to be and pursuing her own happiness. She chooses, what she feels at this time, the best route by living her life as others want her to.

Title 17 (1:12:14—1:15:31) (3:17) Stop after “Drama, life, comedy, life’s parade at your fingertips.”

Ned and Kay come home for Christmas. Kay is engaged to get married and shows her engagement ring to Cary. Ned is going off to Paris to study for a year and off to Iran afterwards to work for a company. He plans to sell the house. He and Kay buy her a TV set for Christmas. 

My viewpoint:

Now, Cary sees that her children, who ran her life, are living their lives and are completely unconcerned about her. Cary realizes the mistake she made in living for others instead of seeking her own happiness. The TV set means that while she’s at home by herself she’ll be watching others live their lives, happy and not the least bit concerned about what she thinks. 

Title 19 (1:19:57—1:21:35) (1:38) Stop after Rod falls in snowbank 

Cary realizes her mistake and goes by to see Ron but he’s not in the mill. He sees her and tries to get her attention. He loses his footing and fall off a ledge and lands face first in a snowbank. 

My viewpoint: 

Title 20 (1:24:52—end) (3:55)

Rod is in the mill under doctor’s care, unconscious since falling off the ledge into the snowbank. He has a concussion. Cary understands now, how she’d let other people come between her and Ron. He comes to and the 1st thing he sees is her face over his. 

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.