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A Boat Called Hope
The director Emanuele Crialese in his third movie explores themes such as strangeness, normality and alterity continuing along the path he ventured on in his first two: “Once we were Strangers”(1997) and “Respiro”(2002). ‘ The Golden Door” tells the odyssey of a Sicilian family who decides to leave the land where they belonged to migrate to the new world of North America, the story of a journey to a new world, and notwithstanding the exquisiteness of its cinematic composition, it is unique in its emphasis on departure and transition, rather than on arrival. This is a story of immigration and emigration, since one cannot exist without the other, like the roots terminate with the flowers.
The film opens up over a stunning, and at the same time, desolate Sicily where two men, Salvatore Mancuso (Angelo Amato) and his son Angelo (Francesco Casisa), appear climbing rocks on their bare feet. There, in the opening shots, we appreciate Mr. Crialese’s attention to landscapes; peasants inhabit a space that seems beyond (our) time, where moments of life are marked by natural and supernatural events that, before industrialization, used to be indissoluble. Set against this unforgiving scenery, the two are part of a world where faith in its primordial meaning, fostered by Salvatore's mystical mother Donna Fortunata (Aurora Quattrocchi), controls daily actions. The fateful sign to leave takes the form of crude postcards carried by Salvatore’s red haired son Pietro (Filippo Puccillo), who seems to cultivate within his own muteness the closest sensibility to the magic. The postcards, one of the most exemplary models of marketing, convey the tallest tales of America: springs of milk, coins on trees, giant man-size carrots. Seduced, Salvatore loads his recalcitrant mother on the bed of a truck, along with his two sons, and a couple of women, Rita and Rosa, who hope to land husbands somewhere along the way to be accepted in the new world where there is no room for single-handed intrepid women.
In doing this, Mr. Crialese reaches an effective synthesis that combines an oneiric vision deserving of the magic touch of Fellini and a respect for reality that recalls the neorealist tradition of Italian cinema. As a matter of fact, he maintains a truthful report of the travelogues of those characters that inhabit his tale, as to both their long journey and their cultural background in Sicily; in keeping a faithful use of Sicilian dialect, he retains an extreme closeness to his characters who in their language express their identities that, like a fruit and its skin, through the same language externalize their commonality.
Breathlessly, we follow the Mancusos’ vicissitudes on their way to the port of Naples and we get a slight idea of what Italy was like at the end of the 19th century, with myriads of different languages and cultures at the backdrop of a state just born and in quest of a sense of nationality.
Among these peasants lurks an Englishwoman named Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Her vivid clothes, red hair, and moneyed tone are in striking contrast to the appearance of the rest of the migrants. Lucy’s ashen skin is the extreme light in a grade of colors set with marvelous mastery by Agnès Godard (the director of photography) against the bronze of the Southern peasants. Neither white, nor black, rather “olive-skinned” was the definition given to those coming from southern shores of the Mediterranean upon their arrival to Ellis Island, we must remember.
A heartbreaking shot when the ship departs introduces us to the second act. This shot is probably the most stunning cinematographic moment in the movie. Mr. Crialese raises his camera high above the masses so that they, at the beginning indistinguishable in their commonality, are slowly torn apart as the ship leaves the dock. The void thus created is filled with agony, hope and thunderous silence, broken only when the sound of the foghorn goes off.
The journey over the Atlantic Ocean lasts more than a week and the movie goes on with the camera venturing down to the bowels of the liner, where the third class of humanity struggles with dramatic bravery against claustrophobic conditions and a storm that leaves everyone almost dead. The scene is followed by a marvelous music performance where the tammorra (a large drum utilized in many folk musical traditions in the South of Italy) is employed to convey feelings and emotions.
The approach to Ellis Island is covered in fog preventing the passengers and viewers from seeing the New World. Here at the border the government of the new world reveals its bio-political side, doing away with those having biological (both mental and physical) features that do not fit with the preordered model. When Madre Fortunata questions the border officers’ authority to define a worthy human being, a power which she does not credit men with, she expresses her refusal to be catalogued and explained in a system of objects; basically her skepticism brings to light what narratives and discourses celebrating the United States, as an open-armed sanctuary for everyone, obscure.
The movie ends with Nina Simone’s powerful ‘Sinnerman’. One, two, ten, hundreds of migrants emerge from a river of milk that represents a membrane between the old and the new life. But the emersion is not a moment of catharsis; there is no judgment to clutch but only confusion and hope reflected in the eyes of the migrants. When they start to swim eventually, we follow them with a sense of acquaintance in our heart, as if we knew where the river ends, as if they were our own family, as if we could tell with certainty that that is the right direction.
JGCinema - Jura Gentium Cinema - Cinema and Globalization