Volume 128: Io Capitano / Golden Years
The Voice of Energy Vol. 128
Greetings, good people. 'Tis a nice day here in Portland so far and I've been up for the past few hours knocking together this newsletter for you, featuring reviews of two foreign features that hit theaters today.
Been a nicely busy stretch for me, working as I have on some reviews of dance performances here in Portland, including a good but overstuffed work by ProLab Dance and a really fun adaptation of Peter Pan put on by Oregon Ballet Theatre. I like getting assignments like those. They take me out of my usual music and movies headspace for a little while. I'd like to extend that out to writing about restaurants and food in some capacity but that's a job for the future.
In other news, the folks behind PAM CUT, the rebranded NW Film Center, asked me to introduce their upcoming St. Patrick's Day screenings of Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan, and Nothing Compares, the documentary about Sinead O'Connor. I'm more excited than nervous about this but I'm still praying I don't fall down into a pile of Guinness and blood before I even get a word out. Hopefully I'll see you there!
Got some really great events coming up at the shop over the next couple of months. If you'd like to know more, reply to this and I'll add you to our mailing list.
With that out of the way, on with the show.
Io Capitano (2023, dir. Matteo Garrone)
Throughout the Western world, we often only hear about the end of a migrant's journey. The boats packed with bodies arriving on the shores of Europe, or the thousands of people scraping by in makeshift camps on our Southern border as they hope to gain asylum. What happens to these hopeful souls between their departure from their home countries to their potential destination is rarely spoken of, and almost entirely ignored within our cultural output.
Even if Io Capitano turned out to be full of sickly sweet bromides, Matteo Garrone would deserve some measure of praise for using his privileged position as a filmmaker of some renown to tell a story of one such exodus. But thanks to his careful, empathetic vision and his insistence on using the stories of Africans who had risked everything to migrate to Europe, he has made a gripping, damning work of art.
What plays out on screen feels, at times, extraordinary and hard to believe if it weren't all rooted in reality. Garrone and a trio of co-writers used news reports and anecdotes from those Africans who survived the often treacherous trek to Europe to build out a screenplay that follows Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), talented teens lured from their homes in Senegal by persistent images of a glamorous life on the opposite side of the Mediterranean.
Their pilgrimage begins easily enough as the two quickly acquire fake passports and, after a long bus ride, are offered cheap transport to Libya. But soon their spirits and their bundle of cash are chipped away at by corrupt cops and an arduous trip through the Sahara where seeing dead bodies caked in sand dot their path. The two are soon separated with Moussa hauled away by the police and Seydou imprisoned, tortured, and sold into slavery by the Libyan mafia.
Seydou — and viewers of the film — are only able to survive the horrors he endures through the small kindnesses extended by his fellow emigres. A splash of water on the face and a small amount of food are lifelines in his often harrowing circumstances.
Still, even as he lets those rays of hope cut through the darkness, Garrone also foregrounds the reality that many who take a similar journey as Seydou don't make it. Riding in a small truck through the Sahara, the two boys watch helplessly as one man is bounced out of the vehicle due to the bumpy terrain and is left behind by the drivers. In the makeshift prison, Seydou is forced to reckon with small piles of dead bodies on the ground and the scars inflicted on others by melting solder. Garrone threads an almost impossible needle with Io Capitano, balancing the dark and light, the real and the magical — all wrapped in unwavering compassion.
Io Capitano opens in theaters today.
Golden Years (2022, dir. Barbara Kulcsar)
The movie world of recent vintage hasn't been shying away from telling stories of older folks trying to rekindle long dormant flames or going on life-changing adventures. They just tend, as they always do, to home in on those older actors that are a few moments away from being red carpet ready.
Golden Years, the charming trifle from director Barbara Kulcsar and screenwriter Petra Volpe, stands out from the fray through a very simple choice: casting actors that look like normal people. The story is one of self-discovery in the mode of Eat Pray Love or Book Club, but instead of Julia Roberts and Andy Garcia, we are Esther Gemsch and Stefan Kurt, two adorably plain but relatable actors from Switzerland.
They play Alice and Peter, a long-married couple facing their final stretch together after the latter retires from his job. Both are shocked out of their complacency after a close friend dies, but respond in different ways. Peter goes vegan and starts exercising fanatically. Alice finds a spark for romance and adventure rekindled after she discovers that her deceased friend was having a passionate affair with someone in France. She tries to fan the flames on a cruise with Peter but is flummoxed by his lack of interest and his decision to invite his widowed friend Heinz along for the trip.
Golden Years mostly heads in the direction you would expect it to, but smartly diverts from that well-worn groove with little surprises including a touch of psilocybin mushrooms and a pleasantly unexpected happy ending for all parties involved.
Golden Years opens in select theaters today.
FTA Pick of the Week
Our regular feature — a recommendation of a movie to watch that is hiding below the fold on one of the major streaming services. In other words: fuck the algorithm.
Hollywood Barn Dance (1947, dir. Bernard B. Ray)
As with most musical movies built around a popular recording artist, the plot of Hollywood Barn Dance is perfunctory, having something to do with a group of musicians from the South heading to Hollywood to earn enough money to rebuild their beloved church back home. Really, it's just an excuse for a lot of performance footage of then-superstar act Ernest Tubb & his Troubadours and a handful of other country performers of the time like Jack Guthrie. The stiff acting by the musicians and the ginned up drama is part of the fun of this breezy little number.
Hollywood Barn Dance is available to stream on Hoopla.
As always, I appreciate you reading and commenting and correcting me (thanks again, Gregg) and hopefully sharing these little write ups with other interested parties. Back next week with more, more, more. Do no harm. Take no shit. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine.
Artwork for this edition is by Consuelo Kanaga whose photographs are on display at the KBr Photography Center in Barcelona through May 12.
This newsletter was written on the unceded land where once stood the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area.