Limbo (2021 | Scotland | 104 minutes | Ben Sharrock)
On a fictional remote Scottish island, a group of refugees await their fate. Not yet granted asylum but no longer safe in their various war-torn homelands, they are stuck, you guessed it: in limbo.
Omar (Amir El-Masry) is the island’s newest arrival; he’s just completed a trek from Syria. His parents have instead ended up in Turkey, and during their brief international-calling-card payphone conversations, they can’t stop asking him to send money he doesn’t have, or comparing him unfavorably to his brother who stayed behind back home to fight. Omar’s strongest tie to home is his grandfather’s beautiful oud, which he stubbornly carries everywhere, although he’s starting to fear he may no longer be able to play the instrument. His only friends are his housemates, other refugees from Afghanistan and Sudan – well-meaning men who try to help him make the best of things but don’t seem to really understand him at all. In short, although he’s escaped the immediate danger of his past for now, he’s lonely and miserable.
The film, Ben Sharrock’s delicate and sensitive sophomore effort, is mostly presented in what looks to be the “Academy ratio”: a nearly-square image rather than a wide rectangle. The constraints of the frame serve as a stark counteraction to the wide open Scottish landscapes it captures: freedom and beauty are there, right within view, but just like Omar with his bureaucratic red tape and cultural barriers, we’re held back from actually experiencing them.
Pale pink accents from both within the frame (playground equipment) and added onto it (title cards), contrasted against the greys and dull greens of the landscape, are visual bright spots echoing the emotional ones Omar eventually begins to latch onto (wry humor, extended empathy, a musical performance) as he slowly finds his footing in this new world. After a fantastical sequence featuring the Northern Lights and an emotional breakthrough, Omar’s misery starts to lift: this film is not simply a dour treatise on the difficulty of the refugee experience today, but an embrace of man’s ability to at least tentatively find joy and splendor in even the toughest of circumstances.
Limbo is playing in theaters now.