Before Mr. Akin scored with "Head On" (2004) and won the Golden Bear, he was regarded as an entertainer with limited artistic ambitions - he even called himself a "commercial filmmaker" in an old interview. But the big award and the media frenzy suddenly made him 'the next hope of German cinema'. Since then Akin has struggled to live up to these ultra-high expectations, because he's only a populist filmmaker at heart, who likes to entertain. Nothing wrong with that.
Akin's cinema is usually more cinematic and emotional than the work of other German filmmakers. In his best moments, Akin was able to create gritty drama about the migrant experience in Germany. But in his worst moments Akin's writing is poor and his films become vulgar. "In the Fade" contains both his strong and weak sides.
His screenplays and direction always were inspired and informed by other filmmakers, for example in "Short Sharp Shock" (1998) he used Scorsese's "Mean Streets" (1973) as the model: One scene is even an exact replica of a scene in Scorsese's film. "The Edge of Heaven" is a multiple-stories feature inspired by Iñárritu's early work. For the thriller-esque "In the Fade" Akin has probably studied Brian DePalma's films carefully: The cinematography reminded me often of DePalma, not only because Akin decided to use DePalma's 'trademark' split-focus lenses for specific shots, too. The style works well. Rainer Klausmann's gritty, but precise cinematography looks good and the film gains a poetic quality through it without sacrificing realism.
Much has been made out of the performance of Diane Kruger - and she's intense in the part. But why did Akin cast a former top model like Kruger and marries her to a Turkish ex-con? It was too hard for me to suspend my disbelief. With better cast leads and with a less annoying 'cute' kid as their son, this would have been so much better...
There are other credibility problems, for example the rather poor dialogue. It didn't sound real to me. There was plenty of opportunity here for good and serious dialogue, but you don't get much beyond crude genre lines and profanities.
The direction - especially in the courtroom scenes - is uneven and some over-the-top performances are slightly misjudged. A few times, I had to laugh, but I'm pretty sure, that was not Akin's intention, was it? It's not the actors' fault, but a case of a director who often doesn't know when 'too much' is really too much.
Mr.Akin made the same mistake here of pressing important political subject matter into old genre formula like in "The Cut" (2014), which dealt with the Armenian Genocide. Except there was little in "The Cut", that gave you an idea, that what happened in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire was the carefully planned and executed mass murder of 1,5 million Armenians by the Turkish rulers. The result was an epic designed like a John Ford 'western' that - while made with good intentions and worth seeing - pleased and educated only few people.
At least, "In the Fade" is not boring: The committed performance of Diane Kruger and the beautiful formalism of Rainer Klausmann's edgy and elegant cinematography save this populist piece of cinema from its more vulgar side, but this subject deserved a better film.
Maybe next time, Mr. Akin.
Akin's cinema is usually more cinematic and emotional than the work of other German filmmakers. In his best moments, Akin was able to create gritty drama about the migrant experience in Germany. But in his worst moments Akin's writing is poor and his films become vulgar. "In the Fade" contains both his strong and weak sides.
His screenplays and direction always were inspired and informed by other filmmakers, for example in "Short Sharp Shock" (1998) he used Scorsese's "Mean Streets" (1973) as the model: One scene is even an exact replica of a scene in Scorsese's film. "The Edge of Heaven" is a multiple-stories feature inspired by Iñárritu's early work. For the thriller-esque "In the Fade" Akin has probably studied Brian DePalma's films carefully: The cinematography reminded me often of DePalma, not only because Akin decided to use DePalma's 'trademark' split-focus lenses for specific shots, too. The style works well. Rainer Klausmann's gritty, but precise cinematography looks good and the film gains a poetic quality through it without sacrificing realism.
Much has been made out of the performance of Diane Kruger - and she's intense in the part. But why did Akin cast a former top model like Kruger and marries her to a Turkish ex-con? It was too hard for me to suspend my disbelief. With better cast leads and with a less annoying 'cute' kid as their son, this would have been so much better...
There are other credibility problems, for example the rather poor dialogue. It didn't sound real to me. There was plenty of opportunity here for good and serious dialogue, but you don't get much beyond crude genre lines and profanities.
The direction - especially in the courtroom scenes - is uneven and some over-the-top performances are slightly misjudged. A few times, I had to laugh, but I'm pretty sure, that was not Akin's intention, was it? It's not the actors' fault, but a case of a director who often doesn't know when 'too much' is really too much.
Mr.Akin made the same mistake here of pressing important political subject matter into old genre formula like in "The Cut" (2014), which dealt with the Armenian Genocide. Except there was little in "The Cut", that gave you an idea, that what happened in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire was the carefully planned and executed mass murder of 1,5 million Armenians by the Turkish rulers. The result was an epic designed like a John Ford 'western' that - while made with good intentions and worth seeing - pleased and educated only few people.
At least, "In the Fade" is not boring: The committed performance of Diane Kruger and the beautiful formalism of Rainer Klausmann's edgy and elegant cinematography save this populist piece of cinema from its more vulgar side, but this subject deserved a better film.
Maybe next time, Mr. Akin.