|
Immigration Love Song
Just what 'In This World' is going on
"In This World," starring Jamal Udin Torabi and Enayatullah. Written by Tony Grisoni. Directed by Michael Winterbottom.
Not too dissimilar from John Sayles' "Casa de los Babys," Michael Winterbottom's 1997 film, "Welcome to Sarajevo" peeled the skin back on viewer's eyes with its analysis of how citizens from comforted nations go into less fortunate ones - usually as a result of the former nation's policies or indifference - and adopt kids in order to save the children.
Last year, the English Winterbottom made one of the year's best films with his romp through the Manchester music scene, factoring in reality and fiction narratives spectacularly in "24 Hour Party People."
Now, bringing the content of the "Welcome to Sarajevo" with the aesthetic of "24 Hour Party People," together, Winterbottom has made one of the more important films of these particularly xenophobic times with "In This World."
"In This World" begins in Peshawar, Pakistan near the Afghanistan border where refugees have fled to since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in 1979.
There, 16-year old Jamal (Jamal Udin Torabi) lives in the Shamshatoo refugee camp earning less than a dollar a day working in a brick factory. His cousin, Enayat (Enayatullah) works in the dusty ghetto of Peshawar at his family's market stall.
Unless one were a pebble at the bottom of the ocean and did not know already, living is bleak in this region of the world. As the film points out, billions were spent to bomb Afghanistan back another thousand years while only a paltry portion of that amount went into the refugee camps. Apparently the occupying military forces are for modernization about as much as the Islamic fundamentalists.
At a wedding, Jamal learns Enayat's family wants to smuggle Enayat to London. Jamal knows how to arrange such things. Jamal is also quick to point out, too, that he speaks English and so he should go along.
During the meeting, bundles of cash in dollars and rupees are given upfront to the shiftiest of men (smuggling is not for anyone less than the most desperate) who make fainthearted guarantees the cousins will make it safely.
Offering up prayers and faith in Allah and man, the family sends off Jamal and Enayat into this smuggling network like the estimated 1 million people who put their lives in the hands of smugglers do annually.
From Peshaway, they board a southward bus for Quetta where they will rendezvous with someone who will take them to western Pakistan and then beyond.
As they move further away from Peshawar, the cousins endure more and more hardship. They wait days for a contact. Some contacts ask for additional fees.
Feeling anxiety and impatience in lands of foreign tongue, the cousins can only count on each other and the kindness of strangers while everyone fears the military.
The biggest challenge they endure on land is across Iran. Iran is a large country and the police do not take too kindly to foreigners, especially Afghanis.
After numerous setbacks, only good people along the way make the journey possible. In one particular poetically shot scene, the cousins travel the snowy mountains into Istanbul, Turkey thanks to a young boy courageous enough to take them. Well, almost.
Once in Istanbul, the two wait with many others -- including a family headed to Denmark -- for a freighter that will seal them shut for 40 hours as they travel across the sea from Turkey to Italy.
Even if they make the journey, and most do not, they are still not done.
From Trieste, Italy onto Sangatte, France the travel continues. Then the waiting, then the stowaway and finally beautiful London where a wonderful life of below minimum wages doing grueling work awaits them hand in hand with hatred from every duped citizen and the scapegoat of every politician.
Until now, unless one actually went through the harrowing process of covert immigration, one could imagine or hear stories about the desperate plight of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who throw their lives on the line for just a passable chance at comfort.
Now, we understand it as good as we are probably ever going to "In This World," thanks to Winterbottom's masterful direction and Marcel Zyskind's unforgettable photography.
"In This World" plays out like a ballad of unfathomable desperation as the digital camerawork brings an intimacy that causes the viewer to feel at once caught up in the journey yet simultaneously forcing the viewer to realize he/she is an observer sitting in a comfortable theater seat in a safe building in a favored nation built on the immigration they generally despise.
|
