A young female French writer-director makes a German-language film about young Arabic men in Berlin. Attention is certain for the Perspektive Deutsches Kino’s opening film, METEOR STREET by Aline Fischer, given the current discourse around asylum and immigration in Germany and Europe. Of course the film was created before the ongoing influx started to dominate the conversation.
Refreshingly, I forget about political (or religious) undercurrents after the first five minutes because this is a film about two disoriented brothers looking for their place in life. A graduation film that should let the director, born 1981 with a degree in political sciences, pass easily.
Erractically on-edge and fantastically annoying troublemaker Lakdhar --the commanding Oktay Özdemir-- is cast against his quiet, brooding younger brother Mohammed, noteworthy newcomer Hussein Eliraqui (himself a Lebanese refugee in Germany), a role he infuses with sensitivity, yearning as well as enough grit to be rounded. Loudmouth Lakdhar makes himself heard; Mohammed we get to know through the camera circling and approaching, caressing its struggling subject. Bit by bit we put together the puzzle of everything that pulls on Mohammed, his own sense of not arriving and not achieving while trying so hard; being without his mother and father; feeling responsible for his near-psychotic older brother; the xenophobic suspicion by some of his colleagues.
The film starts with the soothing sound of running shower water -- set against images of a burning Palestine. After a few minutes we are thrown into the brothers’ daily routine to the soundtrack of vibrant Arabic party pop and Lakdhar yelling at the dogs.
Water is the undercurrent of contemplation, cleansing, washing away the pain. At the public pool, in the shower, and at the end by the sea. Berlin-Tegel district is the metaphorical arrival-and-departure setting, where the brothers share a house next to the noisy airport. Noisy as war-torn Beirut in the opening scene, a juxtaposition helped by a semi-documentary style that marks many recent German productions (like 24 WEEKS or TORO).
The drone of the planes overhead symbolizes a threat of attack as much as the promise of leaving.
In one scene, the air traffic noise is cut against the quiet, contemplative prayer Mohammed squeezes into the little apartment and the brothers’ non-religious lives, searching for a framework and meaning and identity. “Where do you come from?” Mohamed gets asked at the end, in France. “Germany,” is his answer. The film’s title, the street in Berlin where the brothers live, has them dreaming of if not reaching for the stars. In one great scene Mohammed climbs up on the street signs at the corner of Saturn Street and Meteor Street.
With meant-to-be-passing but too noticeable shots of tin soldiers on the cabinet or by adding one layer of irony too many with the brothers’ pizza-eating German shepherds Luna (the moon, another space reference) and Attila (the Hun), the director occasionally overreaches, but one happily forgives her for the overall world she creates around Mohammed and Lakdhar and the lasting emotional effect she achieves.
What does it mean to be a man? “You have to fight like an Arab, to the end,” says Lakshar, mockingly, and we are not sure whether he is talking to himself, his brother or reacting to the horse race on TV.
Some things Alina Fischer leaves beautifully unsaid and uncommented, which gives the film a levity and unpreachiness despite the sombre and slow story. She introduces Mohammed into a crew of working-class bike-riding German labourers, doing odd jobs, in a refreshingly uncomplicatedly way (treacherously so, as it turns out).
This is not the bloodless and self-referential filmmaking of some of the Berlin School of 10 years ago, it is
European cinema that is raw and tender but resists sentimentality. As when Mohammed goes through his parents’ closet to be close to them, putting on his father’s jacket and partly his role, before calling him, back in Lebanon. Like a child (that he is) he asks when they will see each other again, only to get a practical pep talk but no comfort or support. There's the rub: The brothers are on their own, even together, neither getting real support, not from family, friends, colleagues. The free-roaming camera gets close to the protagonists, highlighting their quiet struggle for a place and a definition of what it means to be a man.
Fischer and her two lead actors have come up with great dialogue together, such as a manhood conversation between Lakdhar and Mohammed (or rather Lakdhar talking at Mohammed) while at the public pool, a girls' synchronized swim practice in the background being foregrounded in slo-mo with wonderful close-ups. At times the same repertoire of techniques can feel clumsily expository or ingratiating, as when Mohamed’s German colleagues are asking about his war experience over a (non-alcoholic) beer. There actually are next to no women in this film other than a catalyst at the end.
Just when you think nothing will happen, Mohammed makes a crucial (if constructed) decision. And still I don't mind. The film is nuanced, committed, carefully observing and not taking the easy way out, with a nicely wafting ending mirroring the brothers’ lives. As a female viewer I have rarely been so engaged by the story of a young man.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: Meteorstrasse c Credofilm
