Just finished watching the DVD. I would like discuss many areas of this film. To start with, what is this fear that eats the soul? Is it fear of rejection from a community that distrusts foreigners and therefore fear of being marginalised from a community that one feels part of? Is it fear of the unknown of starting a life with someone who is culturally alien? What is the core of this fear?
shareI don't think you have to find a core to this fear. This expression means every kind of fear "eats the soul", especially when it's exaggerated, as it often is in our modern societies...
shareNote that the original German title is incorrct German, as foreigners who didn't master the German language yet, would speak it.
shareWell, in the scene where Ali says it to Emmi, she told him that she is afraid of what will happen when people come to know that they love each other. In this context, I think Ali means that she should not avoid to do what she thinks is right and should not be afraid of what will happen when she does so - as it will happen also when she is afraid.
If you know that you have to do something, it doesn't do you no good to be afraid as you have to do it anyway.
Literal title would be: Fear Eat Soul.
~~~OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac~~~
Along with the fact that it was imperfect German, Ali himself says that that's the way Arabs speak.
How do you like them apples?
The title is really hard to explain, because this line didn't exist before this movie. Grammar of "essen" is wrong. And there are more Fassbinder titles which didn't exist in that way before and made it in German language, where everybody know these phrases.
We have to go step by step. "Angst" is singular, this means, correct German would be "isst". So here is the first error in translated English title, because "essen" is plural. So English makes no differance in verbs between "I eat" and "We eat", but "(We) eat" or "(They) eat" would be the right way from German view. We would use "essen" with "We", but also with "they" (but not with I, you, or he, she, it). So for the beginning it must be "fear eat", not "eatS".
Than German title says "essen ... auf". I think the English translation would be "eat on". It means, eating until nothing is there.
And third, we would normally use also an article for soul. "Angst isst die Selle auf", but article is missing and in English it is there.
So I would say the correct translation is:
"Fear eat soul on"
Now this German phrase could be the way a foreigner would say the sentence, possibly somebody of arabic origin.
It has become a phrase with different meanings like:
Geld essen Seele auf (Money eat soul on)
Zeit essen Seele auf (Time eat soul on)
and many more or with other words for soul ...
Digital_Data
http://www.youtube.com/LiebensteinMovies
Roger Ebert wrote in his review:
"A few months after Fassbinder died (in 1982, at 37, of drugs and alcohol), I was on the Montreal Film Festival jury with Daniel Schmid, a Swiss-German director who knew Fassbinder very well. He told me the rest of the story of El Hedi ben Salem, who came to Germany from the mountains of North Africa and drifted into Fassbinder’s orbit.
“Germany was a strange world to him,” Schmid told me. “He started drinking, the tension built up, and one day he went to a place in Berlin and stabbed three people. Then he came back to Rainer and said, ‘Now you don’t have to be afraid anymore.’ He hanged himself in jail.”
“Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” might sound like improbable, contrived soap opera. It doesn’t play that way. The reason it gathers so much power, I think, is that Fassbinder knew exactly what was meant by the title, and made the film so quickly he only had time to tell the truth.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-ali-fear-eats-the-soul-1 974
Fascinating quote but El Hedi's remark to Fassbinder is elliptical.
A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.share
Fear is the polarity of risk. Both are necessary to the other. If one dominates within an individual then the person contracts and freezes in their personal growth. An abundance of fear at the expense of risk prevents trying new things, making discoveries as well as mistakes and living spontaneously. This would destroy the soul. It is a creeping part of Western consumerist culture where the focus is on money and possessions.
A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.share
This is the best explanation of what the title means. Fear is (potentially) the most destructive force that exists, and it has the power to decimate the human spirit. In this movie, their love is threatened because of a deep and complex fear and what could be worse than missing out on the most wonderful thing in life because of a fear. Life is sometimes about overcoming fear and when this doesn't happen for whatever reason, the consequences can be devastating. Like never giving oneself the chance to truly live one's life as it should have been lived. There's nothing sadder.
shareI've always sort of taken it literally, as in the "fear" (or the prejudice and alienation) ultimately became too much for Ali, giving him a stomach ulcer that is eating him from the inside out, i.e. "eats the soul". Is that weird?
You have fiddled with the tribal drums of nature! And YOU... PLAY... TROMBONE!