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Edge of Heaven, The

Universal acclaim
Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Fatih Akin
Directed by: Fatih Akin
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 21, 2008
DVD: October 14, 2008
Running Time: 122 minutes, Color
Origin: Germany | Turkey | Italy
Language(s): German | Turkish | English
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Nurgül Yesilçay, Baki Davrak, and Tuncel Kurtiz
Nejat initially disapproves of his widower father Ali`s choice of prostitute Yeter for a live-in girlfriend. But the young professor warms to her when he learns that most of her hard-earned money is sent home to Turkey for her daughter’s university studies. After Yeter`s accidental death, Nejat travels to Istanbul to search for Yeter`s daughter Ayten. Political activist Ayten has fled the Turkish police and is already in Germany. She is befriended by a young woman, Lotte, who invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, much to the displeasure of her conservative mother, Susanne. When Ayten is arrested and her asylum plea denied, she is deported and imprisoned in Turkey. Passionate Lotte abandons everything to help Ayten. A tragic event brings Susanne to Istanbul to help fulfill her daughter`s mission. (Strand Releasing)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul Head-On In July
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
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
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The experience of seeing this film is cumulative, sober and profound.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
The Edge of Heaven is powerfully unsettled--it comes together by not coming together.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Mr. Akin's film is so full of life that it leaves you breathless.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The Edge of Heaven is marked by a number of remarkable performances.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The movie is near-perfect, suspenseful, heart-breaking, profound.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Intermittently powerful drama explores a cross-cultural estrangement.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
All too often, films about interconnected lives stumble under the weight of coincidences. Not The Edge of Heaven.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It's a vivid ensemble experience, and the acting is wonderful.
Read Full Review >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).
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Freddy L gave it a10:
While I was bothered by the "see how it all fits together" narrative in other films, such as "Crash", and "Babel", here it works out well, in an impressive and very moving film.
S M gave it a10:
You won't regret watching this. Promise!!
Elliott M gave it a10:
Far and away the best thing I saw in 2008. Still can't stop thinking about it.
Angie gave it a7:
While this movie may have got me thinking about, well, stuff, I didn't really enjoy it. I found the acting to be very good, but I didn't care for the meandering, situational storyline. That's just me.
Tram gave it a1:
Cultures clash and then heal by film's end. Awfully heavy-handed allegory of EU-Turkey relations. Very disappointing, in light of Akin's previous effort, Head-On (2001) - a far more honest melodrama.
Jay H. gave it a7:
Powerful film, a bit too slow moving at times, but the characters are richly developed, great and well developed screenplay. Fine acting all around. Touching and moving.
