The Mediterranean Migrant Crisis hasn’t exactly been under-represented in cinema in recent years but it has been lacking a certain variety. Whether it’s through supernatural horror, like 2020’s His House, an uncharacteristically soft Ken Loach take with The Old Oak, or the relentless, furious misery of Agnieszka Holland’s upcoming Green Border, the migrants at the heart of the stories have been pretty much exclusively portrayed as sad victims of circumstance. It’s a narrative that Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano seeks to challenge, making this new entry from the reliably entertaining Italian director quietly revolutionary in its way. That’s not to say there’s not hardships to be found here – there are plenty – but Garrone, in this tale of two Senegalese teenagers questing their way to Italy, presents us with a new archetype; the migrant as the active hero of their own story, not just a desperate refugee to be pitied.
We start in Dakar with 16 year old cousins Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), two naïve dreamers who have spent the last six months secretly working on construction sites to earn money to fund a one-way trip to Europe, where they hope to somehow become big music stars. It’s a journey that will harrow and change them as they travel through Mali, Niger, the Sahara, the slave markets of Libya, and eventually the Mediterranean Sea itself, one that Garrone presents as a real odyssey, complete with moments of dreamlike magical realism, while also maintaining all the requisite real-world commentary you need to make a story like this stick.
It starts pretty slowly and can even be frustrating in just how badly Seydou and Moussa underestimate the challenges they’ll be facing, but this in-universe naivety is well-reflected in the open and uncynically charming performances from Sarr and Fall, both making very impressive acting debuts. When the epic sweep really starts to reveal itself, though, things pick up fast; thrilling, horrifying, and moving in equal measure. There are plentiful villains along the way, from corrupt border guards to Libyan mafiosos to the uncaring coastguard forces of Europe, but Moussa and, in particular, Seydou make for powerful, grounding heroic presences.
Seydou earns the eponymous title of captain when he’s forced to pilot the ship that will sail to Sicily (as a minor, the Libyan people smugglers assume he, and therefore the boat, will be treated more leniently by authorities), and watching him grow into this role throughout the third act is very affecting. There’s also some nice stuff whenever he meets someone kindly on his travels – a standout being skilled builder Martin (Issaka Sawadogo), who is instrumental in Seydou’s survival. Garrone creates a semi-mythic moral balance here – earlier in the desert Seydou helped an older woman who reminded him of his mum and now Martin goes out on a limb to help him thanks to his resemblance to Martin’s own son – that is enthralling.
It all looks sumptuous too, especially in the desert, where the bleak and sparse beauty almost make you forget the lethal dangers it poses. Garrone has certainly made more consistently gripping films than this in the forms of Gomorrah and Dogman (the stuff with the Libyan slavers is actually surprisingly low-energy, given Garrone’s previous organised crime efforts), but Io Capitano is still a weighty and memorable epic with a genuinely refreshing point of view.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 