Rabiye Kurnaz' (Meltem Kaptan) squeaking voice is the first thing we hear. "Murat, stop that crap!” She tries to get her grown son out of bed only to find him inexplicably gone in Andreas Dresen's Berlinale competition contender "Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush."
The real crap is a post-9/11 Islamic terror suspicion; the actual Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Turk born and living in Germany, had gone to Pakistan to study the Quran without telling his family, was arrested, handed over to US military and spent years in Guantanamo, where he was tortured before being exonerated of criminal actions and released.
But this film is not about Murat but about his mother, who, a few days after reporting Murat missing to the German police, finds her son on the tabloid front pages as “The Bremen Taliban."
"I am Rabiye, Murat's mama,” she from now on introduces herself, to Hollywood stars and international decision-makers alike. Rabiye is as naïve as she is pragmatic, as petit-bourgeois as gutsy, as trusting as possessive to the point of smothering (an accusation one of Murat’s companion’s levels at her). Most importantly, she is a mother, undeterred, unstoppable, fearless as she takes on stalling imams, a doubtful husband (“Why would he be in prison for years if he hasn’t done anything?”), influential judges and the most powerful man in the world, the president of the United States. Throughout, she is consistently herself, a walking (or rather Mercedes-driving) contradiction between tradition and diaspora, between arranged marriages and fitness classes.
Her systemic innocence, trust in authorities and relative political ignorance —“What is this island camp?”, “Why are there so many Black people in the US?”— give Rabiye the opportunity to ask the basic and it turns out right questions, such as “How can my son be still in prison if he was acquitted?” The immigrant's wide-eyed wonder thus gives seasoned filmmaker Andreas Dresen an in into challenging the system. He lets Bernhard Docke (Alexander Scheer from Dresen’s previous “Gundermann”), the German human rights lawyer Rabiye has hired, explain the convoluted international legal proceedings to her and the audience. The allyship and growing friendship between the two carries the film. "I trust Angela Merkel, she’s a mother.” - “No she’s not.” - “Well, she’s a woman.” goes one of the many quick-fire Rabiye-Bernhard-Rabiye (she always has the last word) exchanges.
Rabiye and Bernhard/Meltem and Alexander make a heart-warming tag team between jet lag and German apple cake the Turkish house wife from northern Germany makes. "Mothers cry, it’s normal," she consoles Murat’s soon-to-divorce-him first mail-order bride (the real Murat Kurnaz is now remarried with three kids).
Dresen's fourth Berlinale competition film harnesses his and longtime scriptwriting partner Laila Stieler’s strengths: empathy, emotional warmth, and attention to human details. While people are sitting in Guantánamo in the limbo of (pre-crime) terror suspicion without warrant or indictment, the world keeps turning, life goes on. Bernhard's legal secretary wants to go home at 6 and not pull all-nighters; Rabiye races Bernard to meet his kids for a soccer game and reprimands him for dropping by on Christmas.
When teetering on the brink of crossing the line into stereotype and folklore —Turks are late, Germans on time; Rabiye hangs evil eye charms on the lawyer's desk lamp and keeps asking the water-drinking Americans for sugar in her coffee—, Dresen pulls the narrative and tone back. "You’re like a mother," Bernhard laughs conciliatory as Rabiye hands him his briefcase, holding her son’s future, before their big Supreme Court deposition.
For a decade, the filmmaker himself has been an honorary constitutional judge in Germany and here he inserts himself into a little telling cameo on to that US Supreme Court bench our protagonists face. Amidst all the homeliness of the film, Dresen does not avoid the big human rights and security questions although he can only touch upon them through challenges from Bernhard’s colleagues, who bring up the tolerance-towards-the-enemies-of-tolerance conundrum, or journalists at press conferences worried that our collective safety warrants new baselines against global terror threats.
At the end of the day, there is only one answer and that is the rule of law, the right to due process, innocent until proven guilty, and international human rights conventions as the guiding principles of a stable liberal society. Dresen, through his characters, takes that clear political and moral stance, for example when progressive Bernhard rants against the German red-green government he voted in absolving itself of any responsibility for the resident-not-citizen. In that same vacuum, Rabiye smartly but unsuccessfully tries to coax the Turkish consul to help, goading him: “The Germans are slow, you Turks have to step in!"
The director does take some shortcuts, makes some fictional contractions and flattens some of the moral arguments (think “radicals love their little brothers too” footage). And you don’t have to have had somebody die in 9/11, as Bernhard’s law partner did, to recognize the Taliban for the murderous thugs they are. But then this is not a political documentary but a family drama, with brilliant scenes like Bernhard and Rabiye standing in the Kurnaz’ typical, well-kept German semi-detached, breaking it to Mr. Kurnaz that they’re going to the White House.
For her portrayal of a desperate, loving and fearless mother, overwhelmingly charming, Cologne TV comedian Meltem Kaptan in her first huge role, might as well take the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, as she wanders through the city of Bremen, like she belongs, where she belongs.
by
@JuttaBrendemuhl
image courtesy Pandora Filmverleih
