It’s not a particularly novel thing that Io Capitano does. Movies tracing the difficult journeys of migrants or refugees to freedom has been its own subgenre in the international cinema scene for a while now. And Io Capitano, produced by Italy, France, and Belgium, though about a pair of Senegalese teenagers, doesn’t even have that authenticity in the storytellers that several of these other movies have. Director Matteo Garrone even admits that while the story was based on various accounts of people who had made their way through Africa to Europe, it was entirely a narrative of his own creation.And it does feel like it, the movie not having the same specificity or personal emotional hook of something like Flee or even The Swimmers. Yet there is some power to it, nominated as Italy’s entry for the Best International Film Oscar. It’s a brutal story, obviously a resonant one, and it does what it can to make sure its audience comprehends that -even as it undermines its own narrative.
In an effort to help their families and escape their situation of perpetual poverty in Dakar, two sixteen-year-olds Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall) decide to attempt to go to Europe. They receive false passports and transit through the desert of Mali and Niger, but the sheer harshness and suffering of the journey soon becomes apparent to them, in the brutal conditions of the Sahara, the horrendous treatment at the hands of Libyan authorities, and the dangerous crossing through the Mediterranean.
The story that Garrone constructs is much more about innocence lost than any kind of noble journey towards a better life. Certainly we see the conditions that Seydou and Moussa live in in Dakar, the limited mobility, but there isn't the sense of desperation communicated that is often a part of these narratives. Where Garrone could in the early goings highlight the poverty of their situation he instead hones in on Seydou's relationship with his mother and her anger and fright at the prospect of him making the trek to Europe. She is so incensed by the idea, he is forced to cover and claim it as simply a joke. Obviously it is not, but the two boys also don't appear to weigh it with the seriousness it requires -it is clearly something they don't think through. And that naivete has consequences.
To focus on the migrant story from this lens is not in any way invalid, though there is the danger of diminishing the real-life hardships that form the impetus of why so many are driven to such a choice; or conversely to cast migrants and refugees as simply kids who don't fully comprehend what they are doing. A true specific story could counteract these problems but Io Capitano is again a fiction. I don't believe Garrone intends for these insinuations -he seems to have a lot of empathy for his subjects- but he is not so careful about them in the way he approaches the story. But for a certain sense of triumph in the ending, it is a movie that could easily reinforce a xenophobe’s worldview.
Certainly leaving home is seen as the mistake when Seydou, captive and tortured in a Libyan prison, expresses regret and sorrow towards the mother he left behind. It is a chapter of the story that sees him separated from Moussa and essentially indentured to the Libyan militia (one scene in which he is sold as a bricklayer is not at all subtle in its allusions to the slave trade). Yet that image of prosperity in Europe, even in the light of some tempered expectations, is enough to continue to drive him forward. And it is worth noting that Sarr is fully capable of conveying that. Garrone of course hired a cast of a lot of non actors -Issaka Sawagodo as Seydou’s workman mentor Martin (who volunteers him out of the prison) is one of a few trained actors on the film, and is notably quite good as a result. But Sarr really delivers on a lot of the difficulty he is tasked with performing, from the physical to the intensely psychological. Khady Sy as his mother also has a strong presence -his leaving her secretly is a point the film never fully reckons with, but she is with him in spirit on the journey -most starkly in a desert mirage where she floats over him, much as we had seen her metaphorically do when he was home.
Garrone also does well illustrating the sense of scale -especially in the early portions of the movie that fixate on the vastness and emptiness of the desert crossing, the weight of people dying along the journey that forces Seydou and Moussa to grow up fast (and hearkens back pretty clearly to Lawrence of Arabia). The fake passport photos are taken against the wall of a solitary building in the middle of nowhere. Much later there is a pretty chaotic Mediterranean crossing in a boat Seydou is forced to helm himself while crises like storming rain and a pregnant woman on-board exacerbate the situation. It is a dramatic and fairly effective illustration of what the people on those rafts are forced to go through.
But Garrone doesn’t do much more than recreate a lot of this imagery. The characterization and motivation for Seydou and, to a lesser extent, Moussa is not communicated with a lot of depth or passion. It doesn’t have to be to garner sympathy -those most humane of us don’t need to know the backstories of the people so desperate to flee to Europe- but it is something that Garrone wants to relay but cannot effectively. And so what’s left is largely just recreation of a fairly well-documented generalized experience, with no more personal attachment than comes from any western interview with a migrant or refugee -less in fact, given those are expressions of real stories with specific emotions attached. The attempt to capture that is noble, especially through Sarr and his intense dedication, but it is still missing that something distinct to give the movie meaning beyond the reiteration of a message.
In its best moments, Io Capitano hints at this. That surreal vision in the desert, the relationship that comes up between Seydou and Martin -I wish Garrone took more of an interest in these subjects once he brought them up. What the movie fundamentally is is an impression of a documentary, only without the the urgency of style and a sense of hard truth to the story being told. What the movie sets out to do is humanize the Senegalese migrant -it’s effect instead more generalizes him. And I don’t think that’s the best approach to material as currently drastic as this.
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