Friday,
June 01, 2007
Movie: "The Golden Door";
Sicilian Family Seeks Promise of America
Salvatore
(Vincenzo Amato) is an illiterate, impoverished Sicilian widower that emigrates to America
with his elderly mother and two young sons.
What
America
offers exactly, he doesn't know. He
has no frame of reference for the place save for the handful of fanciful
novelty postcards that have made their way back to his tiny, remote village amazing pictures of miraculous produce
the size of farm animals and the
equally incredible legends that circulate among his neighbors. What other
wonders might this new world, where coins apparently sprout on trees, contain?
Reaching
the port of debarkation, after a long journey by horse-drawn cart, Salvatore
and his family are greeted by a confounding throng and a battery of crude tests
and inspections. These are conducted by the shipping company wanting to avoid
the expense of bringing home the immigrants turned away at Ellis
Island.
Cooped up for days in the dark bowels of the ship, Salvatore, his family and
the great majority of his fellow travelers have no way of guessing what's in store on Ellis Island or what awaits if they
are allowed to pass through "the golden door" into America.
"The
Golden Door" depicts the coming together of two worlds so different that
they remain mysterious to each other even as they endeavor to make sense of
each other with the help of professional interpreters. Ignorance, hope and
imagination combine to create the strange, lyrical images that form in
Salvatore's mind. As primitive as
they are, they are no less misguided than the pseudo-scientific principles
clung to by the doctors and researchers on Ellis Island,
who mistake poverty and lack of education for genetic
inferiority.
The
white-coated buildings at Ellis Island,
modern barbarism was practiced, where families were separated and immigrants
denied entry on the advice of eugenicists. Perhaps more than any medium, film
has cemented the legend of the island as a welcoming place of refuge for the
world's castoffs.
Crialese, who researched the island extensively, gives us
an alternate, infinitely fascinating view of a place where, at a specific time,
scientists labored to prove the supposed
genetic inferiority of Italians,
Russians, Hungarians,Jews, and other ethnic
groups and passed their research along to Congress, resulting in quotas for
immigrants from different countries.
MOVIE
REVIEW
'Golden Door'
Dreams
just beyond reach through the 'Golden
Door'
By
Carina Chocano
Times Staff Writer
June 1, 2007
It's hard
to imagine what an original cinematic take on the 19th century Italian American
immigrant experience might look like until the giant vegetables start showing
up in Emanuele Crialese's
beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey "Golden Door," winner of the
Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.
Salvatore (Vincenzo Amato) is an illiterate, impoverished Sicilian widower
considering emigrating to America with his elderly mother and
two young sons. What America
offers exactly, he doesn't know. He
has no frame of reference for the place save for the handful of fanciful
novelty postcards that have made their way back to his tiny, remote village amazing pictures of miraculous produce
the size of farm animals and the
equally incredible legends that circulate among his neighbors. What other
wonders might this new world, where coins apparently sprout on trees, contain?
When Salvatore t ries to imagine his future, he sees
himself wading into a river of milk, then climbing aboard a passing carrot the
size of a canoe. This seems as good a guess as any.
The film's original Italian title is
"Nuovomondo," or "new world," a
familiar, well-worn term that Crialese re-infuses
with all the extraterrestrial wonder it must have once packed. He re-imagines
the long and difficult voyage from a primitive, forgotten outpost of
civilization to an immense, modern metropolis as a literal rebirth. Cooped up for
days in the dark bowels of the ship, Salvatore, his family and the great
majority of his fellow travelers have no way of guessing what's in store on Ellis Island or what awaits if they
are allowed to pass through "the golden door" into America.
It's this deceptively simple, never
actually stated idea the immigrant
as fetus, waiting to emerge from the womb that shapes the transplanted Italian
director's third feature and informs
its point of view. "The Golden Door" depicts the coming together of
two worlds so different that they remain mysterious to each other even as they
endeavor to make sense of each other with the help of professional
interpreters. Ignorance, hope and imagination combine to create the strange,
lyrical images that form in Salvatore's
mind. As primitive as they are, they are no less misguided than the
pseudo-scientific principles clung to by the doctors and researchers on Ellis Island, who mistake poverty and lack of education
for genetic inferiority.
When we first see Salvatore, he is climbing up a rocky crag with his son,
Angelo (Francesco Casisa). They are barefoot and
carrying sharp stones in their mouths religious offerings to a saint they hope
will advise them on whether they should chance the trip abroad. Not long
afterward, Salvatore sells his animals in exchange for clothes, shoes and
passage for himself, Angelo, his deaf-mute son, Pietro (Filippo Pucillo), and his mother, Fortunata
(Au rora Quattrocchi). He
also agrees to escort two young girls who have been promised to rich American
husbands.
Reaching the port after a long journey by horse-drawn cart, Salvatore and his
family are greeted by a confounding throng and a battery of crude tests and
inspections. These are conducted by the shipping company wanting to avoid the expense
of bringing home the immigrants turned away at Ellis
Island. Here the family encounters a mysterious Englishwoman named
Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who, with her elegant if
slightly shabby wardrobe and obvious education and breeding, sticks out among
the peasants, farmers and laborers like the fairy-tale princess that many
aboard the ship come to believe her to be.
The gradual courtship of Salvatore and Lucy, therefore, is not only improbable, it takes on a magical dimension, transpiring
almost wordlessly. Amato and Gainsbourg give
remarkably emotive performances, made more emotional by their relative
wordlessness.
Their discovery of each other exists in contrast to the white-coated, modern
barbarism at Ellis Island, where families were
separated and immigrants denied entry on the advice of eugenicists like the
infamous Henry Goddard. Perhaps more than any medium, film has cemented the
legend of the island as a welcoming place of refuge for the world's castoffs. Crialese, who
researched the island extensively, gives us an alternate, infinitely
fascinating view of a place where, at a specific time, scientists labored to
prove the supposed genetic inferiority of Jews, Italians, Russians, Hungarians
and other ethnic groups and passed their research along to Congress, resulting
in quotas for immigrants from different countries.
A marvel of modern efficiency and a young nation's
naove confidence in its ability to scientifically
shape its destiny by denying its humanism, the Ellis
Island of "Golden Door" is light years away from the
hardscrabble island where Salvatore was born. But the narrow view of the world
that they both provide is remarkably the same.
carina.chocano@latimes.com
"Golden Door." In Italian with English subtitles.
MPAA rating: PG-13 for brief graphic nudity. Running time: 1
hour, 58 minutes. Exclusively at the Landmark, 10850
W. Pico Blvd. at Westwood
Boulevard, West L.A.,
(310) 281-8233.
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