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Friday, July 11, 2025

IO CAPITANO

Writer/director Matteo Garrone (GOMORRAH/’08) has a major work here; awards, Oscar nom., yet not much seen.  A tough watch, but superb, raw, timely, deeply moving.  The story is old and currently unpopular, immigrants leaving their homes for something better, in this case Africans going to Europe.  A touchy topic these days.  Senegalese cousins Seydou & Mousa, 16, but looking like young men, ignore all advice and risk a journey north that proves violent and terrifying, heading thru Africa to Libya and the Mediterranean, then across the sea for Italy to find work and send money home where their families live in flimsy lean-tos hardly better than migrant camps.  Moussa the natural alpha-male, urging on less impulsive Seydou.  But as horrors & brutalities pile on (bribery at every juncture; desert transport by truck and foot more like a death march; outlaw shakedowns and torture; senseless military arrests), it’s Seydou who turns leader and caretaker; though he too will need the kindness of strangers to survive.  Harrowing stuff, yet Seydou’s biggest fear still to come when he’s given charge of the boat taking nearly a hundred refugees on the last leg over the Mediterranean to Italy after a couple of minutes instruction on how to captain a ship.  Stunningly realized by Garrone, technically the film is immaculate, with one location topping the last, a cast filled with unmatchable non-professionals, with incidents of sweeping action and escalating terror seemingly caught on the fly.  International anti-immigration sentiment no doubt made this one a tough sell, but the film demands to be seen and understood.  Its terrible beauty beautifully captured.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The Greeks in their wisdom would follow tragedy with Farce or Physical Comedy to clear the palette with roars of laughter.  Is such a thing even thinkable today?  Could we watch a lightly sentimental cartoon on fresh immigrants coming to America like Spielberg’s AN AMERICAN TAIL/’86 or Rodgers & Hammerstein’s corny FLOWER DRUM SONG?  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/01/an-american-tail-1986.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/flower-drum-song-1961.html

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