Edge of Heaven, The

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The best approach is to begin with the characters, because the wonderful, sad, touching The Edge of Heaven is more about its characters than about its story

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Oropelled by memorable performances by mostly unknown actors. The most famous of the ensemble, Hanna Schygulla, delivers a by turns serene and shattering performance as a mother struggling with loss, conscience and the first glimmers of unexpected connection. She's only one essential and unforgettable part of a flawless whole.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

With impeccable skill, Akin has made a film roiling with cruelty but guided by tough political optimism. No, we can't all get along, but some us of are trying.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The experience of seeing this film is cumulative, sober and profound.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Though I love McCarthy's movie, The Edge of Heaven - with its virtuoso narrative and frames packed to bursting with unruly life - has the potency of "The Visitor" squared.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Akin is German-born but of Turkish heritage, and his films have often been concerned with the particular clashes and conflicts between those cultures. This film, though, does so in a much more oblique way than 2004's "Head-On."

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Hopping from Germany to Turkey and back again, Akin is out to capture the ways that a globalized world can tear up our hearts, and repair them, too.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The Edge of Heaven is powerfully unsettled--it comes together by not coming together.

Newsweek David Ansen

Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

By the end you know the characters in it so well that you can't believe you've seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new. And that may be because the world they inhabit is immediately recognizable -- until we get to heaven, it's where we live -- and like no place you've been before.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Akin's film is so full of life that it leaves you breathless.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

A story about generational expectations and cultural shifts, The Edge of Heaven raises questions it can't answer, which makes it only more powerful.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Akin achieves a peaceful balance here –- alongside the death and seemingly senseless tragedy, there’s also a kind of reassuring equilibrium.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Edge of Heaven is marked by a number of remarkable performances.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The movie is near-perfect, suspenseful, heart-breaking, profound.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Akin divides The Edge Of Heaven into thirds, and ends the first two sections with emotionally devastating scenes of violence, before easing into a third section that deals with the repercussions and lessons learned.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

I prefer to think of Akin, however, not as a forger of patterns but as an ironist who understands that bad luck is a crucible, in the heat of which we are tested, burned away, or occasionally transformed. The Edge of Heaven is about something more exasperating than crossed paths; it is about paths that almost cross but don't, and the tragedy of the near-miss.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal.

Variety Derek Elley

Superbly cast drama, in which the lives and emotional arcs of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- criss-cross through love and tragedy.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Intermittently powerful drama explores a cross-cultural estrangement.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

All too often, films about interconnected lives stumble under the weight of coincidences. Not The Edge of Heaven.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It's a vivid ensemble experience, and the acting is wonderful.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, director Fatih Akin brought an unusual cultural perspective to "Head On" about a marriage of convenience between a beautiful Turk and a suicidal German. In The Edge of Heaven, his first dramatic feature since then, the characters navigate the same cultural divide, but here Akin is more preoccupied with the sense of responsibility that links parents to their children (or vice versa).

Village Voice Nick Pinkerton

It's not brilliant, but it wears current events on its sleeve, feeling out the state of German-Turkish relationships as the former Ottomans clean house for E.U. membership, and the demographic earthquake of 70 million Muslims waits at Europe's door.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

In The Edge of Heaven, a more tempered Akin seems content to allow the incidental lives of incidental people merging incidentally to pass quietly and at their own paces. Which indicates a much-needed maturation of the "Babel/Crash" formula but also fails to rattle your bones the way those movies did. Pick your poison, I suppose.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Like a more personal, less pretentious version of Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Babel," this spiraling dissection of circumstance, choice and fate is more about thoroughness of vision than tricky storytelling.