Matteo Garrone's 2008 "Gomorrah" was an unflinching look at Naples' nihilistic underworld, and in particular at the lives of youngsters who are swept up into it. It had the advantage of being based on the reporting and a related novel of Roberto Saviano (who also was credited as a co-screenwriter), and it offered little in the way consolatory bits of good-news optimism - it was this unwillingness to sugar coat a human disaster, but rather to portray it in all its relentless horror, that gave that film its strength.
In "Io Capitano", Matteo Garrone takes as his subject the calvary of African clandestine migration toward Europe, a journey that -- like the parallel journey toward the southern border of the U. S. (only more perilous, as it involves sea crossings) -- leads to appalling suffering and, too frequently, to horrible and wasteful deaths. That many do make it and manage to grab on to mostly marginal existences in Europe should not divert our concern from the tens of thousands who die somewhere along the way, or from the gratuitous suffering of all who attempt the journey, something that rational and more generous formal immigration policies could instantly alleviate.
Yet Garrone in this case turns his back on "Gommorah"'s rigorous realism and gives us instead an over-esthetized, gorgeously portrayed Issue film that takes us through the stages of the journey from Sahelian Africa to Libya and beyond as we know them from the many accounts that reach us through the news media, packages them, and presents them as boxes to be checked, interspersed with sudden (and generally implausible) feel-good plot twists. Some of the episodes (in particular the crossing of the Sahara from Mali to Libya) are indeed portrayed as harrowing, but the beauty of the imagery and some of the fantasy devices that Garrone uses (very lovely in their way) soften the reality.
And much of the tale is downright inaccurate, based on what we know. To begin with, these days most would-be clandestine migrants from Senegal don't travel via North Africa, but instead sail off into the Atlantic in small boats, heading toward the Spanish Canary Islands. This crossing is even more dangerous than that of the Mediterranean, but at least you don't have to run the gauntlet of the gangs of kidnappers, extorters and enslavers who line the Sahara-North Africa route and who are depicted here in cursory (and often barely plausible) segments that give way to longer, more heart-warming episodes. And were the film's climactic sequence to occur in real life as it is depicted here, with the protagonist triumphantly raising his fist and crying out "I am the Captain!", he would most likely be arrested on the spot by the Italian authorities and charged with human trafficking, as many in exactly his situation have been in Italy and more recently in the UK.
There is much to admire in purely cinematic terms, starting with the gorgeous, color-saturated photography (as opposed to the appropriately grim, washed-out look of "Gomorrrah") and the lovely depictions of family life in Dakar (along with an admirable refusal to show it as an unrelenting misery that the protagonists have no choice but to flee), and, above all, wonderful performances by the two teenage boys who are those protagonists, whose bond is central to the plot and touching in its affectionate naturalness. Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall are hugely talented and I hope to see more of them soon.
For all my reservations, I'd welcome a sequel that picks things up from where they leave off here - there is, inevitably, a whole further chapter to be written.
So by all means go to see "Io Capitano" for all this very good stuff. But know that this film is about as credible a depiction of modern migration from Africa as "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is of the Holocaust. The topic deserves something more uncompromising - the equivalent of "Gomorrah", for example.
In "Io Capitano", Matteo Garrone takes as his subject the calvary of African clandestine migration toward Europe, a journey that -- like the parallel journey toward the southern border of the U. S. (only more perilous, as it involves sea crossings) -- leads to appalling suffering and, too frequently, to horrible and wasteful deaths. That many do make it and manage to grab on to mostly marginal existences in Europe should not divert our concern from the tens of thousands who die somewhere along the way, or from the gratuitous suffering of all who attempt the journey, something that rational and more generous formal immigration policies could instantly alleviate.
Yet Garrone in this case turns his back on "Gommorah"'s rigorous realism and gives us instead an over-esthetized, gorgeously portrayed Issue film that takes us through the stages of the journey from Sahelian Africa to Libya and beyond as we know them from the many accounts that reach us through the news media, packages them, and presents them as boxes to be checked, interspersed with sudden (and generally implausible) feel-good plot twists. Some of the episodes (in particular the crossing of the Sahara from Mali to Libya) are indeed portrayed as harrowing, but the beauty of the imagery and some of the fantasy devices that Garrone uses (very lovely in their way) soften the reality.
And much of the tale is downright inaccurate, based on what we know. To begin with, these days most would-be clandestine migrants from Senegal don't travel via North Africa, but instead sail off into the Atlantic in small boats, heading toward the Spanish Canary Islands. This crossing is even more dangerous than that of the Mediterranean, but at least you don't have to run the gauntlet of the gangs of kidnappers, extorters and enslavers who line the Sahara-North Africa route and who are depicted here in cursory (and often barely plausible) segments that give way to longer, more heart-warming episodes. And were the film's climactic sequence to occur in real life as it is depicted here, with the protagonist triumphantly raising his fist and crying out "I am the Captain!", he would most likely be arrested on the spot by the Italian authorities and charged with human trafficking, as many in exactly his situation have been in Italy and more recently in the UK.
There is much to admire in purely cinematic terms, starting with the gorgeous, color-saturated photography (as opposed to the appropriately grim, washed-out look of "Gomorrrah") and the lovely depictions of family life in Dakar (along with an admirable refusal to show it as an unrelenting misery that the protagonists have no choice but to flee), and, above all, wonderful performances by the two teenage boys who are those protagonists, whose bond is central to the plot and touching in its affectionate naturalness. Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall are hugely talented and I hope to see more of them soon.
For all my reservations, I'd welcome a sequel that picks things up from where they leave off here - there is, inevitably, a whole further chapter to be written.
So by all means go to see "Io Capitano" for all this very good stuff. But know that this film is about as credible a depiction of modern migration from Africa as "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is of the Holocaust. The topic deserves something more uncompromising - the equivalent of "Gomorrah", for example.