GOLDEN Door takes its international release title from the Emma Lazarus poem engraved on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of the new world signalled in the original Italian title, Nuovomondo. The film marks an ambitious undertaking for writer-director Emanuele Crialese after his intimate, intriguing Respiro (2002), which had a contemporary setting on an island off the coast of Sicily.
Although Golden Door takes place early in the 20th century, it shares several preoccupations - fate, superstitions, magic realism - with Respiro. Vincenzo Amato plays Salvatore Mancuso, a widower farmer barely eking out an existence in rugged Sicilian mountain terrain when he decides to emigrate with his elderly mother (Aurora Quattrocchi) and his sons (Francesco Casisa and Filippo Pucillo, who also played Amato's sons in Respiro).
His imagination fuelled by faked photographs of oversized hens and vegetables, suggesting that everything is bigger and better in America, Salvatore willingly buys into myths that it is a land of milk and money. He has been told there are rivers of milk in California, and he dreams of coins growing on trees. Inevitably, he will learn the truth the hard way.
Opting for a traditional three-act structure, Crialese ends the first section with a powerfully eloquent overhead shot - on the pier at Palermo as the crowded ship pulls away from port, permanently separating the passengers from their families and friends. The Mancusos travel in third class, suffering through the chaos of cramped conditions and a violent storm that takes the lives of many.
Crialese presents a harsh, realistic picture of the immigrant experience - far removed from the idealised fantasy of Far and Away, in which 19th-century Irish folk actually used such phrases as "lighten up". And the journey is not over when the ship finally docks on Ellis Island, where a rigorous vetting process awaits.
Striking photographed by Agnès Godard, Golden Door is formed in the observational manner of a documentary recreation rather than being primarily driven by narrative. Unfortunately, it founders in its key fictional device, setting up a potential second wife for Salvatore in the well-dressed English fellow traveller stiffly played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. As with the troubled heroine of Respiro, her presence attracts a great deal of gossip and speculation, and not just from the other characters. The viewer is left equally mystified as to why she happens to be in Sicily in the first place and why she travels in steerage.
These loose ends undermine a compelling picture that takes on a contemporary relevance as the future of illegal immigrants continues to be the subject of political debate in the US.
