Limbo: A kinder, gentler look at asylum seekers

Limbo (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for occasional profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.21.21

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.

 

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.

That said, the well-titled Limbo examines this humanitarian catastrophe in a manner that’s both familiar … and somewhat quirky.

 

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 Omar, quiet and withdrawn, has fled the strife in Syria; his parents have safely relocated in Istanbul, while his brother Nabil has remained behind as a member of the resistance.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.

Inferno: Flickers and dies

Inferno (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

I’ve no idea why this series continues to be popular; each entry is sillier than the one before.

Dan Brown may be able to maintain reader credibility in a lengthy novel — Inferno runs a self-indulgent 609 pages — but director Ron Howard’s film adaptations are no more sensible than the old Perils of Pauline silent movie serial.

A series of arcane, art-related clues eventually lead Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and
Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) to the fabled "death mask" of Italian poet Dante
Alighieri. But what has this to do with a potential world-wide plague? And do we care?

David Koepp’s screenplay for Inferno reduces the plot to little more than a race-race-race against time, occasionally alleviated when famed university symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) pauses for breath in order to solve another arcane riddle locked within a famed piece of artwork.

On top of which, attempting to make sense of the conspiracy-laden supporting characters is beyond the ability of mere mortals. “Duplicitous” doesn’t begin to cover the crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses in this ludicrous plot, which quickly devolves into a tiresome guessing game.

Lessee ... first they’re all bad guys. Then some of the bad guys become good guys. Oh, wait, no; that one was bad all along. And that one was good. Until turning bad again.

All with poor Langdon caught in the middle.

It quickly becomes impossible to believe — or care about — any of these people. All we can do is wait for the murk to clear, accompanied by tediously complicated explanations, so matters can build to a staggeringly inept climax, and we can go home.

Brown may have sold all this meandering nonsense to his readers — full disclosure prompts acknowledging that I’m not among the faithful — but Koepp can’t begin to distill it into a two-hour film. We can’t help wondering, as loyalties finally become apparent in the third act, why Certain Parties didn’t simply ask for Langdon’s help, rather than concocting such an elaborate means of “forcing” his assistance.

What makes Howard’s Dan Brown adaptations even more exasperating is their insistence on taking such stuff and nonsense so seriously. Robert Langdon’s profession and expertise make him a close cousin to Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, but director Steven Spielberg wisely turns those chapter-play adventures into larkish thrill rides, with plenty of winking and nudging.

Brown’s style, on the other hand — reproduced here by Howard and Koepp — always collapses under the weight of its own pomposity.