In its basic outline the story told in “Golden Door,” Emanuele Crialese’s beautiful dream of a film, is hardly unfamiliar. Some version of this immigrant’s tale — setting out from the old country, crossing the Atlantic in steerage, arriving at Ellis Island — is part of the family history of millions of Americans. But what makes Mr. Crialese’s telling unusual, apart from the gorgeousness of his wide-screen compositions, is that his emphasis is on departure and transition, rather than arrival.
His film takes its English title from the Emma Lazarus poem about the Statue of Liberty, but the lady in the harbor, like the rest of America (apart from Ellis Island), remains unseen as the director takes us up to the door but not through it. The Italian title, “Nuovomondo,” means “new world,” but this too is a bit misleading. It is the Old World that dominates this chronicle of Italian peasants striking out for a future they can barely imagine, and the achievement of the movie is to immerse the modern viewer in a way of perceiving the world that has nearly been forgotten. You may have looked at stiff, yellowing pictures of ancestors from a century ago and wondered what they thought and felt, and it is this kind of curiosity that “Golden Door” comes remarkably close to satisfying.
In the days before aviation the physical distance between rural Italy and New York City was vaster than it is now, but “Golden Door” is as much about time travel as it is about the geographical kind. Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) and his family effectively live in the Middle Ages, cut off from nearly every manifestation of modernity. When Salvatore strikes up conversations below decks, he is startled to learn that people from other villages speak a common language.
Illiterate and superstitious, he is first enticed to embark on the journey by crude postcards that show America as a place where giant coins grow on bushes, where onions are as big as donkey carts and chickens as big as donkeys. And when he must make that decision, Salvatore scrambles up a craggy hill with a stone in his mouth, laying it down at the shrine of a saint whose supernatural counsel he seeks.
The actual America, which is to say Ellis Island, is shown as a place of rigorous but not altogether malignant bureaucratic procedure, where the new arrivals are subjected to physical and psychological tests meant to determine their fitness. (Arranging differently shaped blocks in a rectangular tray does not seem inherently more rational than carrying a stone up a hill in your mouth.) There is also a decorous if somewhat creepy marriage market, where bachelors who have established themselves in America offer themselves — and legal status — to women from back home.
The film does not patronize Salvatore, who is brave, dignified and clever as well as unlettered. He gathers his grandmother, his son and his brother (who does not speak and may not be able to hear) along with two young mail-order brides from the village and does his best to protect them all on their journey.
Before boarding the boat they encounter an Englishwoman named Lucy Peters (Charlotte Gainsbourg), whose air of almost aristocratic refinement stands in striking contrast to their rough rusticity. Why this delicate, entitled creature should be joining the wretched refuse is never explained (though an American immigration official does note that it’s unusual to find an Englishwoman in a boatload of Italians), a decision that contributes to the film’s mysterious, almost magical atmosphere.
The wary infatuation that begins to flicker between Lucy and Salvatore provides a lovely note of romance, and the sentimentality that inevitably infuses a story like this rarely feels soft or overwrought. There is fear and confusion on the faces of the travelers, but also expectation and wonder. And even if we know, more or less, what lies in store for them — their children will be our parents and grandparents after all — we can’t help but share in their feeling of anticipation.
“Golden Door” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). There is some brief nudity.
Source: New York Times
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