A family living in poverty leaves behind the world they know in hope of finding new opportunities in this historical drama from director Emanuele Crialese. The Mancusos are a family struggling to make ends meet in a small farming community in Sicily in 1913. Life has long been hard for the Mancuso Family, who have lived in the same village for generations, and one day they are visited by a man who claims to be from the United States. The man tells them of the wonder and plenty of life in
America, an offers to make it possible for them to travel to the New World and find work there. The Mancusos cautiously accept the offer, but after a dangerous voyage aboard an ocean liner, the family arrives in New York to face a number of new challenges -- the humiliating examination at Ellis Island, and abandoning their old lives and ways as they struggle to assimilate in a massive city that is now their home. Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Francesco Casisa and Vincenzo Amato, The Golden Door (aka Nuovomondo) received its world premier at the 2006 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
The rhythms of the movie are slow and daydreamy, but [director] Crialese delights in breaking up the realism with his protagonist's mystical -- almost madcap -- visions of the New World's abbondanza.
Crialese presents enough historical detail to give many 2nd and 3rd generation Americans today an idea of what physical and mental scrutiny their grandparents might have been subjected to in order to be accepted through the "Golden Door."
The early parts require some patience, but the film richly rewards that patience. I know of no film that so patiently and so completely documents the Ellis Island experience.
Golden Door is a cinematic treasure reimagining the emotional landscape of Ellis Island, dipped in the delights of magical realism and the enchanting nomadic dual consciousness of cultural relativism.
"Golden Door" is an intricately detailed yet ethereal movie about the journey of a group of Italian peasants to America around 1900. Hoping to be reunited with his brother in the New World, Salvatore Mancuso(Vincenzo Amato) travels with his sons Angelo(Francesco Casisa) and Pietro(Filippo Pucillo), along with his
elderly mother(Aurora Quattrocchi). They are escorting two young women, Rita(Federica De Cola) and Rosa(Isabella Ragonese), who are going to the United States to marry men they have never met. Just as they are about to depart Italy, Lucy Reed(Charlotte Gainsbourg) enters the picture... None of the emigrants have ever gone any distance beyond the village they were born in, so what makes them take such a perilous journey is the extreme poverty at home coupled with the fantastic promises of America which include money on trees, huge vegetables and rivers flowing with milk. They are not stupid, just lacking a proper education at a time when technology is not quite at a point to permit a free flow of information. All they have are postcards of a wondrous land.
December 3, 2008
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
Well-shot immigration drama ends on quite a peculiar note.
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