I, Captain: Journey to the Deer Hunter (review)
Matteo Garrone signs a hard and colorful fresco following the journey of a young migrant who leaves Senegal to cross the Mediterranean.
Released at the very beginning of the year in cinemas, Me, Captain will be offered this Tuesday evening on Canal +. First advise you.
Matteo Garrone was not expected in this territory. Far from his native Italy, the director of Gomorrah follows the journey of Seydou, a young Senegalese man who left Dakar with a friend to realize his dreams of the West. But his odyssey will turn into a nightmare: Seydou will fall into the hands of swindling smugglers, be ransomed by the army and then tortured in Libyan prisons before setting sail on a makeshift raft to cross the Mediterranean…
Me, Captain is therefore a hellish journey, but also an initiatory tale. Because Garrone tells above all the story of the loss of innocence of his two teenagers who go from joy to disillusionment in confronting the madness of men. Refusing the socio-pensum or the edifying testimony, he shows in an unprecedented way the migration – sometimes very hard, often very violent – through the eyes of those who live it. And by putting faces to numbers, he restores their humanity to these thousands of men, women, children, who leave each year for a fantasized elsewhere. We are therefore far, very far, from the lands surveyed by Garrone until then.
Yet, Me, Captain strangely works as a synthesis of all his cinema. Frequent dreamlike escapes recall his obsession with the world of fable (one thinks of his Pinocchio or to Tale of tales), while the mixture between documentary harshness and the freedom of fiction, evokes his very first Roman films (which already confronted the fate of migrants). It relies above all on an exceptional cast and the appearance of the young Seydou Sarr is one of the most astonishing recent discoveries.
Trailer: