Golden Door Review

In its basic outline the story told in the Golden Door, Emanuele Crialeses beautiful dream of a film, is hardly unfamiliar. Some version of this immigrants 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. Crialeses 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. This movie is packed with drama and life altering situations. It is very well put together and to me seems quite historically acurate. I loved this film!