by Margaret Dempsey

Created on: June 09, 2009   Last Updated: June 10, 2009

Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven is a unique movie in which the plotline seems to hold less significance for the viewer than the main characters and their struggles with identity. I myself found it difficult in the earlier moments of this film to remember who hailed from which country. The Edge of Heaven blends and blurs ethnic lines between Germany and Turkey also those of Germans in Tukey and Turks in Germany. Multiculturalism and globalization is even challenged by the German character Susanne Staub and Turkish character Ayten ztrk in their discussion of Turkey's potential membership into the European Union.

Identifying reflections of each nationalism in various characters is blurred greatly by the events that occur along each of their semi-intertwining lives. In the end, we see Akin underline a shining perseverance of the human spirit that extends beyond nationalisms and life events. However, this doesn't mean that the characters forgo national loyalties or ethnic identities; simply, characters find meaning in human kinship and compassion rather than in the prominence of ethnic or religious differences.

Specifically, a few characters seemed to have more clearly defined national identities than others. For example, Nejat Aksu seemed to be a citizen of whichever country he chose to live in at the time. He fit in clearly and well in Germany in the earlier moments of the film; he taught German at German university and seemed to identify with his life and culture there, even though he himself was a Turk. Yet as soon as he he had a mission that was greater than himself and his present life, he returned to Turkey without one look backwards. He gave up the German identity he had taken on for the moment and traded it for his home identity of being a Turk in Turkey. Here we see the beginnings of the underlying theme that human solidarity will eliminate the need for human-pronounced ethnic boundaries.

On the other side of the spectrum, I think that Ayten ztrk does indeed have a more clearly identified national identity as a Turk. She spends most of her time and energy opposing the Turkish national government as a resistance fighter on the streets of both Turkey and Germany, or working from inside a Turkish prison in Istanbul. While this may initially signal a lack of strong national identity, I see it is just the opposite. If she were disconnected from her country politically or culturally, she wouldn't dedicate most of her endeavors to the betterment of it. The

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