The Edge of Heaven (+ bad Seattle Weekly review)

My girlfriend and I went to see this wonderful film at the Seattle International Film Festival the other day. It's partly a cultural study of (Turkish) immigrants living outside their country (Germany), but more importantly a vivid portrait of human relations.



After seeing the film, I happened to read Nick Pinkerton's review of the film in the Seattle Weekly and I was quite surprised and the sarcastic review (the latter part shown here):

...Heaven ups the ambition: Its screenplay is a Dickensian network of happenstance, serving to intertwine six characters of different ages, nationalities, and castes. Three parent-child sets fracture, then reconcile/recombine. This expression of growth-through-trauma mostly involves actors hugging and making wistful "older and wiser" expressions while looking into the middle distance. (Everyone gets along. That the Turks believe in a different God than the Germans, and actually believe at that, is apparently not a pressing concern.) If the united Europe aspires to compete with America globally, this is good news—they've found their own multiculti Paul Haggis! (NR) NICK PINKERTON

Mr. Pinkerton, the Turks do not believe in a different God--that's why Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are known as monotheistic religions. That a similarity between Christianity and Islam is mentioned in the movie (maybe a minute segment) without going into the differences has absolutely nothing to do with this movie. This film is not a documentary on the religious and social divide in Europe between immigrants and non-immigrants; rather, it's a character study on the similarities between different people, happening in today's world as Turkey tries to join the European Union.

Let me guess, you thought that Forrest Gump was not good either because a black and white guy couldn't be friends in the deep South during the tumultuous 1960s?