Given the refugee crisis once again developing on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Scottish writer/director Ben Sharrock’s cross-cultural drama couldn’t be better timed.
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| With nothing but time on their hands, a quartet of asylum seekers — from left, Omar (Amir El-Masry), Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) and Farhad (Vikash Bhai) — struggle to fill every hour of every long, lonely day. |
Omar (Amir El-Masry) and Farhad (Vikash Bhai) are among a couple dozen asylum seekers “temporarily” housed on one of the remote Uist islands, off the northwest Scottish coast. It’s mostly a soul-deadening waiting game — amplified by Sharrock’s very slow pacing — although part of each day is spent taking outrageously misjudged “cultural awareness” classes taught by a couple of clueless locals (Sidse Babett Knudsen and Kenneth Collard).
At other times, these men make a lengthy trek to the island’s lone phone booth, plunked in the middle of nowhere, and take turns chatting with family members in their respective countries. Omar, quiet and withdrawn, has fled the strife in Syria; his parents have safely relocated in Istanbul, while his brother Nabil has remained behind as a member of the resistance.
Omar’s prized possession is his grandfather’s oud, which he never lets out of his sight, always carrying its oversized instrument case. Back in Syria, before the country went to hell, Omar was poised to follow his grandfather’s footsteps, as a master of this beautiful, lute-like instrument.
But Omar’s right hand was injured somewhere along the way, and he’s thus been unable to play. More crucially, he’s unwilling to play: burdened by a degree of survivor’s guilt far heavier than the oud itself. The occasional phone chats with his mother (voiced by Darina Al Joundi) merely amplify the feeling that he should have remained at his brother’s side, to fight the good fight.
Farhad, something of a cheerful opportunist, assigns himself the role of Omar’s “talent manager.” But Farhad’s surface merriment conceals his own, quite serious reason for having fled Afghanistan. At one point, he impulsively steals a rooster and makes it a pet, naming it Freddie after his favorite musician, Freddie Mercury.
Farhad wants something he can call his own, akin to Omar and his oud.
Omar and Farhad share a modest but comfortable bungalow with displaced Africans Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), who’s mad about soccer, and Abedi (Kwabena Ansah). They and all the other refugees are regarded with amusement and curiosity by the island inhabitants, as typified by the four young people — Plug (Cameron Fulton), Stevie (Lewis Gibson), Cheryl (Silvie Furneaux) and Tia (Iona Elizabeth Thomson) — who give Omar a ride at one point.
Their behavior isn’t anything akin to malice: more like astonishment, as if these temporary visitors just stepped off a spaceship from Alpha Centauri. But of course that’s cruel in its own subtle way, as it enhances Omar’s sense of “otherness,” of not belonging.
(Ironically, it’s much easier to understand the English spoken by Omar and his comrades, than that of the locals; the Scottish accent is impenetrable!)
The bulk of his days are spent wandering the island’s harsh but epic landscapes, oud carried at one side, seeking some sort of meaning to his complex and dangerous past, and the uncertain future that stretches ahead. He’s spiritually dead, and — as with all the other refugees — isolated and lonely: profoundly lonely.
They’re all marking time, waiting for the delivery of a letter that will determine each man’s fate. And even if such a letter bears good news, will these men still be themselves? Can identity endure, when wrenched so abruptly from its cultural origins, and then plunked into such an alien environment?
Ultimately, as autumn passes, and the island is gripped by its unrelenting harsh winter … change is forced.
Sharrock’s goal, clearly, is to present Omar and his comrades in a compassionate, non-judgmental light: to make them sympathetic and comprehensible in a manner that earns our empathy. In this, Sharrock succeeds completely. These men couldn’t be further from the “social threat” demonized by ultra-conservative, right-wing media blowhards; they’re brave and sensitive souls seeking the “better life” to which we all aspire.
While struggling to retain their dignity in the process.
El-Masry conveys a wealth of emotion while saying very little. At first blush, his morose expression seems an unyielding constant, but only if one overlooks the nuances in his often sorrowful eyes, the set of his mouth, the various ways he carries his body. When subjected to innocent (but still rude) questions from Cheryl and Tia, his silence begs for the ability to flee, to suddenly materialize anywhere else.
Farhad’s presence actually gives Omar a release: somebody to interact with, somebody to worry about … because, despite his outward ebullience, Farhad seems oddly vulnerable, even fragile. Bhai plays this duality equally well, and many of his shared scenes with El-Masry are profoundly poignant.
I wish Sharrock granted Wasef and Abedi similar focus, but we don’t spend nearly enough time with them.
Cinematographer Nick Cooke repeatedly finds the beauty of this harsh but oddly mesmerizing landscape; I can’t imagine living in such a place, but goodness, it’s beautiful. Cooke also makes a visual joke of his long shots: notably the straight, horizon-stretching road that leads to the aforementioned phone booth, and the distance one must walk to reach it.
That note of humor notwithstanding, it’s one of few. Sharrock refers to his film as a “funny satire,” which I dispute; some critics also have compared Limbo to the eccentric, dry wit of Scottish director Bill Forsyth, which is even further off the mark.
Granted, occasional touches here warrant a chuckle, as with the local grocer whose notion of a “spice section” is limited to salt and pepper. But Limbo is primarily a somber, brooding affair, as befits the possibly grim uncertainty that hovers over Omar and his comrades like a dark cloud: minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week.
Sharrock’s film is instructive, illuminating and engaging, but it’s by no means “fun.”
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