There are some really beautiful moments in this hard hitting documentary. It's sometimes hard to watch--teh camera forces us to stare the crisis in the face when many Europeans would rather turn a blind eye. Refugee documentaries like this are really devastating. But there is so much life in these people that have gone through hell and back to reach opportunity. The movie is really slow (and music-less), intentionally so. But it is mesmerizing. It is kind of an interesting concept to mix documentary with staged scenes. But the metaphor is brilliant and unmistakable. The young Lampedusan boy is adorable. He supposedly has a lazy eye and so he wears an eyepatch to force him to train his weaker eye. The metaphor, of course, is that Europe must train itself to see with its other eye the pain that these refugees have suffered. There is a staged scene where the boy sees a doctor and discusses his anxiety, an anxiety that is common among locals dealing with the influx of refugees. The boy is supremely Italian in this scene, as he "acts"--the intonation of his voice is so Italian. But it is that scene that it really all clicks. And you see how brilliant Gianfranco Rosi's direction is.
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