Rating: 
Summary: Gentle, Funny, and Wry: One of Fassbinger's Best
Review: A very moving film whose romantic story-line is underscored by painful ironies. The love affair between the 60 year old German char woman and the much-younger Moroccan mechanic in the context of a disapproving and racist German society is convincing, and alternately funny and sad. Even more funny and sad, however, is how easily each of the two characters can forget the lessons they learn from each other and revert back to old habits. Ali forgets about love and acceptance and goes to someone who will provide him with couscous. Emmi forgets about what it means to persecute someone because of ethnicity and rejects a Yugoslavian girl that comes to work with her. Brilliantly filmed, short and concise, and powerful, a great movie.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant film
Review: Ali - Fear Eats the Soul is a somber German tale by Rainer Werner Fassbinder of racism in Munich of the 1970s. An older woman, a widow, happens into an Arab bar to escape the rain. This is post-1972 Munich, where the bombing of the Olympic games by Islamic terrorists is still fresh in peoples' minds. But this woman is Emmi, who married a Polish worker years ago despite her own family's prejudices. She raised 3 children with him before he died of an ulcer. Now she's ready to love again. And love she does - she falls for Ali, a Moroccan worker with a gentle soul and a partial command of the German tongue. Ali is 20 years younger than her, but he falls for her gentle ways. They sleep together on the first night, and despite the hostility of her family, her co-workers and local group, she marries him quickly. They are very happy together, but the anger of all around her wear her down. Finally she goes off on a vacation with Ali, promising him that when they return everything will be better. An in an amazingly bizarre plot device, things ARE better. Suddenly everyone who was mean to them before finds reasons to be nice - selfish reasons. The grocer wants her money back. Her son wants her to care for the granddaughter. The apartment-mates need help moving equipment. Emmi doesn't care - she's just happy that everybody is being nice again. But Ali is getting frustrated. He gave up his soul to be with Emmi, and while Emmi is regaining her friends again, Ali has nothing. He is still stuck with a foreign tongue, living in a foreign landscape. All he asks for is some cous cous to remind him of hime - and Emmi harsly tells him to get used to German cooking. So Ali, who is a drifting reed through most of this story, drifts back into his Arab world. He hooks up with a female Arab friend of his who cooks the food he loves and who snuggles with him at night. He plays cards with his Arab buddies while listening to Arab music. Emmi realizes her loss and comes after him. She tells him it's OK if he has other women, other friends. All she wants is his love and his presence, to fight off the loneliness. And Ali admits to her that he loves only her, that he doesn't know how this got so confusing. Then Ali collapses with an ulcer, just like Emmi's immigrant husband did. The doctor tells Emmi that he can't help Ali at all - he can only fix him for now, send him off and expect him to return in 6 months with another ulcer. But Emmi promises that she will make this work - she will reduce the stress so Ali is happy. I really enjoyed this movie, especially in modern day times with all the arguments going on about gay and lesbian marriages. It wasn't that long ago that the color of your skin was enough to bar you from marrying. It's very scary to think that, with so many people hoping someday to find happiness, that we would put barriers in the way of any two human beings who have managed to find it, even if they are years apart in age, or shades apart in color.
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Summary: Want some couscous?
Review: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a wonderful story with a strong socioeconomic message that can be compared to Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1956) and Far From Heaven (2002) by Todd Haynes where an older woman loves a younger man from a different ethnic group. Fassbinder's film takes place in Munich in the shadow of the 1972 Olympics when Arab terrorists took part of the Israel Olympic team hostage, which ended in a blood bath. Nevertheless, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a completely unrelated story to the bloodshed that took place in 1972 as it is told around Ali, a Moroccan guest worker, and Emmi, an older German woman, who fall in love with one another. Ali and Emmi come across each other at a local Arabian bar as Emmi seeks shelter from the rain outside. Ali and Emmi dance, converse, and Emmi invites Ali home for a nightcap as she is suffering from loneliness. Together they have to confront prejudice and racism as their relationship progresses since Ali looks and speaks differently than the German people around them. During their struggle they decide to go on a short vacation in order to escape the intolerance that surrounded them and as they come back Ali and Emmi begin to have their own doubts of their relationship. Fassbinder's film is a brilliant story and it uses some interesting cinematography that elevates the cinematic experience. However, the sound quality of the dialogues removes the realistic tone of the environment which sounds recorded and the characters are sometimes awkwardly portrayed by the cast. Nevertheless, Fassbinder created a truly unique cinematic experience as he colors the environment with his own touch and it leaves the audience with a great feeling.
Rating: 
Summary: a stereotyping habit has consequences
Review: As Lisa Nary elsewhere points out, the actor was the director's lover. Gee whiz.... It is a woman, Lisa Nary who notices this insignificant detail, not an "Inquirer" reporter. Homosexuality is important to her, as it would be to other rewievers of the "everyman" disposition. Yet, Fassbinder had commited suicide in a supremely liberal society that let him explore subjects no Spielberg would touch in the U.S. with a ten-foot pole.
(...)
Rating:
Summary: MOULDINGS ........
Review: Considering all of the hoopla surrounding "Far From Heaven" - excellent though it is - one should not forget this earlier tribute to Douglas Sirk - and in some ways more fitting ..... Considering the unglamorous framework used by Fassbinder 'reducing' the elevated Jane Wyman [Julianne Moore] role to a blue collar charlady {the very superior Brigitte Mira} this version speaks volumes and addresses perhaps the universal fear of the 'slightly different'. Very unsettling to watch 30 years ago - still unsettling under today's 'wraps'.
Rating:
Summary: MOULDINGS ........
Review: Considering all of the hoopla surrounding "Far From Heaven" - excellent though it is - one should not forget this earlier tribute to Douglas Sirk - and in some ways more fitting ..... Considering the unglamorous framework used by Fassbinder 'reducing' the elevated Jane Wyman [Julianne Moore] role to a blue collar charlady {the very superior Brigitte Mira} this version speaks volumes and addresses perhaps the universal fear of the 'slightly different'. Very unsettling to watch 30 years ago - still unsettling under today's 'wraps'.
Rating:
Summary: An exception to the rule
Review: Fassbinder's movies are notoriously for certain tastes only, and I don't like much of what I've seen. But when I saw ALI, I was blown away. It's a simple story of a May-December relationship between a young Arab and an older German lady, and while the conflict cliches are present, the end result is absolutely beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: Strong narrative about xenophobia
Review: Gripping Fassbinder-movie from 1974 with stunning performances is a pamphlet on the still relevant issue of xenophobia in Germany. A Moroccan worker starts a relationship with 60-year old custodian. This theme is cast in a brilliant narrative cinema, and, in the view of the current situation of migrant workers in Western Europe and America, it will never loose its poignancy.
Rating:
Summary: Fassbinder`s insight into socal prejudice
Review: In `Fear Eats the Soul` Fassbinder examines a range of social prejudices that divide and stigmatise people.The central plot strand concerns Emmi, an elderly widow who falls in love with and marries Ali, a Morrocan guest worker.This relationship gathers a cluster of hostilities before itself imploding as the two partners fall back into conventionalised patterns of prejudice and desire. The film ends with a moving image of doomed reunification, which itself symbolises the entire relationship. Fassbinder`s achievement in this film is showing how a spectrum of social tensions reinforce and amplify each other. The scene in which the newly married couple clumsily try to navigate through a menu in a high class restaurant, with the aid of a sneeringly contemptuous bourgeious flunky of a waiter, is an example of Fassbinder`s sophisticated handling of his subject matter. Similarly, the unravelling of the relationship, as Emmi and Ali revert into familiar patterns of loyalty and exclusion, is sensitively handled. This is a superb film that never falls into lazy sentimentality or cynicism. It is a testament to the ability of the cinematic medium to explore social issues intelligently. Highly reccommended.
Rating:
Summary: Them against Us or Us against Them
Review: The movie starts out with groups of people staring at each other which would make anyone feel awkward or different. The directing style reflects distance by showing people far away and then bringing them up close in tightly cramped spaces. The fear is what separates people and eats at you. This is symbolized by Ali's stomach ulcer. In order to connect you have to stand together against all the prejudice and ugliness out there and treat each other well. The more we treat each other with respect the more we can stop the fear growing inside of us. At least this is the way I perceived the film. The director filmed this in 14 days and it was a very small project compared to other movies he made with big budgets. The Arab husband was really the director's lover. The director himself was gay and probably experienced prejudice himself. The movie is slow and awkward but I think it is meant to be this way. A definate must see for anyone who likes foreign film. It is probably one of the best as far as the message it displays and projects on film. Lisa Nary
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