The Italian director of the film "Gomorrah", Matteo Garrone tells the story of Two teenage boys, Seydou and Moussa journeying from their home in Senegal to Europe in the Oscar-nominated movie Io Capitano. Their journey takes them across the Sahara desert, encounters with vicious criminals and other unspeakable atrocities ending with a Mediterranean sea journey to Italy in a boat where the migrants themselves are forced to operate.
It is a movie that shows human suffering and cruelty but ultimately it fails to become an emotionally overwhelming cinematic experience, at least for me.
Io Capitano is worth seeing, for the work of Seydou Sarr in the film's lead role, he excels in carrying the whole movie till the end. The movie's failure is in its generic filmmaking style. The story is told linearly with a starkly realistic visual aesthetic. There are no surprises or unpredictability. This kind of narrative should give more time for the audience to experience the suffering emotionally. The rushed-through narrative of Io Capitano tries to capture an expansive narrative of one immigrant traveling from Senegal to Italy resulting in a film where the most devastating developments are introduced and then disposed of quickly. No character gets enough time to develop and only Seydou and Moussa remain in your mind. A handful of fantasy sequences peppered throughout Io Capitano, which provide a drastic departure from the starkly realistic visual aesthetic of the rest of the movie. Io Capitano's brief fantasy sequences involving flying figures stand out so much because the rest of the movie is very rudimentary on a visual level. This movie is celebrated multi-award-winning with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. So this review is my personal feelings.
Remember what Martin Scorsese said in an interview "Not every film is for every person. Not every novel is for every reader, not every painting, etc."
It is a movie that shows human suffering and cruelty but ultimately it fails to become an emotionally overwhelming cinematic experience, at least for me.
Io Capitano is worth seeing, for the work of Seydou Sarr in the film's lead role, he excels in carrying the whole movie till the end. The movie's failure is in its generic filmmaking style. The story is told linearly with a starkly realistic visual aesthetic. There are no surprises or unpredictability. This kind of narrative should give more time for the audience to experience the suffering emotionally. The rushed-through narrative of Io Capitano tries to capture an expansive narrative of one immigrant traveling from Senegal to Italy resulting in a film where the most devastating developments are introduced and then disposed of quickly. No character gets enough time to develop and only Seydou and Moussa remain in your mind. A handful of fantasy sequences peppered throughout Io Capitano, which provide a drastic departure from the starkly realistic visual aesthetic of the rest of the movie. Io Capitano's brief fantasy sequences involving flying figures stand out so much because the rest of the movie is very rudimentary on a visual level. This movie is celebrated multi-award-winning with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. So this review is my personal feelings.
Remember what Martin Scorsese said in an interview "Not every film is for every person. Not every novel is for every reader, not every painting, etc."