Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and its deconstruction of Hollywood’s narrative conventions

Ali: Fears Eats the Soul by Fassbinder explores and brings to light the issues that exist in the relationship between Hollywood’s cinematic conventions and cultural ideologies. Ali and Emmi’s romance refuses to fulfill the expectation the audience has regarding love stories in films; the loneliness they both feel is what brings them together, not necessarily a romantic encounter or physical attraction. Furthermore, the narrative conventions of Hollywood’s love stories and societal expectations of love in Germany during the time the movie was made positions them as an odd match and to some degree can even make some people feel uncomfortable. This is done on purpose by Fassbinder to call attention to the ways Hollywood has constructed what the audience expects inside and outside the story world.

How the characters in the film and us as spectators, literally, look at Ali and Emmi’s relationship and their private lives is an important aspect of Fassbinder’s commentary about ideology in cinema. The film portrays Ali as the outsider and because of how the cinematography was done the spectator ends up viewing Ali with the same fetishization and coldness as the characters in the film. Moreover, Emmi and Ali are contained in terms of image and sound, which is a visual representation of their lack of autonomy in real life. Ali: Fears Eats the Soul highlights the extent to which the cinematic apparatus can contribute to the ideological indoctrination of people, as well as how it can be influenced by the ideologies in the outside world.