Last Updated on March 21, 2024, 11:07 PM | Published: March 21, 2024
The grand, cinematic adventure story has become the stuff of fantasy on film, reserved mostly for hobbits, knights, and princesses.
But there are sprawling, element-defying, continent-spanning adventures happening right now in our real world that could put plenty of fantastical epics to shame.
Italian writer/director Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated “Io Capitano” tells one such real world adventure tale, following the increasingly dangerous trek of two teenage boys attempting to migrate from their Senegal home to Europe, along the way falling prey to gangsters, police, self-doubt, and even the endless desert itself.
But while you might expect the usual, obvious gritty filters and hazy colorations that so often characterize Africa on screen, Garrone and cinematographer Paolo Carnera instead imbue each scene and every shot with crystal clarity and vibrant, lively color, showcasing even simple modern African life with true beauty and energy.
It’s a staggeringly gorgeous film, punctuated throughout by soaring aerial shots and sweeping landscapes, framing the boys and their fellow travelers among the full enormity of the deserts, the cities, and the seas. The air of grand wonder and epic scale never once lets up, even in the darkest moments, and there is admittedly a lot of darkness here.
For all the film’s beauty, and its quietly brilliant, short moments of daydream and hallucination, Garrone keeps his focus always fixed on the realism of the story, always centered on the boys, in particular the reluctant, sensitive Seydou, brought to rousing life by teenage newcomer Seydou Sarr.
There’s horror, death, torture, and trafficking. There’s credible heartbreak and intensity of the kind experienced every day by those that would risk everything to find a better life.
But the film never seems to fall into “passion play” histrionics or “tragedy porn” melodrama. The story’s realism extends to its believable balance of the positivities of life as well.
A lesser or more manipulative filmmaker would start this story in the worst slums and squalor, with the characters forced by dire circumstance to brave the journey to escape hell.
But in “Io Capitano,” Seydou and best friend/cousin Moussa are reasonably happy and well-loved. Their lives are ones of poverty and labor in Senegal, yes, but it’s far from hell. Seydou writes and sings songs, watches soccer, loves his mother and sisters and community and is loved in return.
They leave because they simply want to leave, because they want a different life for themselves among the culture and entertainment of Europe. They believe it’s all there waiting for them.
As teenagers, it’s their naivety that’s often center stage. They dismiss warnings about the journey’s perils, they heed the wrong advice or misplace their confidence, and in one poignant early scene, they even refuse to believe that there is also homelessness and poverty in Europe.
But it’s that same naivety that provides the perspective and framing through which you see the expanse of the world as it begins to open up to the boys.
For all the terrors they face, for all the brutal realism and difficulty that awaits them, “Io Capitano” remains an adventure story, because that will always be the language of young, idealistic boys everywhere, each believing himself to be a celebrated artist or heroic leader in waiting.
The title translates to “I am the Captain,” a reference and declaration that only becomes clear in the story’s seafaring final act, but also an acknowledgement of these young men taking the controls of their own lives right from the start. For better or worse, whether bravery or boyish folly, they’re steering their own course.
They make decisions of their own rather than simply being carried by the tides and waves of the plot, and that’s something that seems to be increasingly rare in modern storytelling.
It’s no exaggeration to say “Io Capitano” can stand alongside the grandest cinematic adventures, with all the color and traversal of “Lord of the Rings,” the dwarfing expanse of “Dune,” and the heart-swelling defiance of “Gladiator.”
But here, the wars are internal. The heroism is personal. The great, unknown wilderness is the world in which we live, populated by millions of very real adventurers each attempting their own trek into a dark, sprawling world that for many is every bit as fantastical and new as any fiction.
Powerful, inspiring, and deeply, achingly gorgeous, “Io Capitano” is a film that undeniably deserves to be seen on the largest screen and to be felt on the largest heart.
“Io Capitano” screens March 22nd through March 24th at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Sam Noble Theater.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
