In Ben Sharrock’s second feature “Limbo,” the compositions are frequently flat. Miraculously, though, the characters contained within them are anything but. The neatly coiffed geometry of Nick Cooke’s photography immediately jumps out, recalling masters of the tableau like Elia Suleiman or Aki Kaurismäki. As the camera stilly observes a seated crowd of refugees uninspired by a cultural immersion seminar, Sharrock’s offbeat perspective announces itself. This is not going to be typical trauma porn.
The longer Sharrock lingers in these fastidiously staged frames, the more his radical approach to the style begins to emerge. The so-called planimetric framing in which Sharrock dabbles is usually employed as a tool of irony. The impossibility of such clean, tidy images instantly alerts the viewer to how the director is constructing something unreal, placing them outside – often above – the action of the film. Such an approach reduces the actors to mere set dressing or, in the case of indie director-turned-Instagram aesthetic Wes Anderson, twee paper dolls milling about.
In “Limbo,” Sharrock employs irony not to create distance from his characters but instead to bring the audience closer to the incongruities of refugees’ existence on a remote Scottish island. He draws viewers in rather than keeping them at arm’s distance. And by situating his story within a recognizably mundane milieu rather than in the removed realm of the “issues” drama, he opens up new possibilities for how audiences can relate to impacted people. Rather than anesthetizing viewers with cold calculation, Sharrock suffuses his orderly frames with uncommon compassion and care.
Paradoxically yet poetically, Sharrock’s approach both heightens the subjectivity and highlights the stark reality facing these men who fled hardship in their homelands. “Limbo” most closely tracks the experience of Omar (Amir El-Masry), a young Syrian musician separated from his family as all but one brother tries to escape the country’s civil war. He seeks a new start in Europe but, for the time being, has traded the looming specter of violence for a life that’s a jumble of contradictions. Scotland helps get him out of harm’s way, but as Omar and his fellow refugees await the processing of their asylum claims, the government sequesters them out of sight and mostly out of mind at the country’s edge. This temporary home is hardly paradise but not exactly punishment, either – simply a strange new environment filled with a fresh assortment of baffling banalities.
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Finding comedy within the refugee crisis is a bit like traipsing through a minefield, yet Sharrock navigates it so deftly that “Limbo” never feels like a high-wire act. The film avoids humor that stems from cultural disconnect. Such “lost in translation” moments make foreigners the butt of the joke or cast their hosts as clueless. Sharrock is after something much more impactful and poignant here. He locates laughs in the expansive grey area between our lofty ideals of inclusion and belonging … and the messiness of putting those values into practice.
That droll discordance expresses itself most poignantly in how the film’s neatly arrayed visual schema clashes with the indeterminate fates of the people encompassed within it. “Refugees Welcome ©” reads the sign draped outside their dwelling, yet those in charge cannot even supply it with enough furniture to accommodate all the men. They’re taught the English language and Western culture but mostly experience it by immersing themselves in DVD box sets of “Friends.” Sharrock does not fear a visual gag or a sly edit, but it’s in these still moments – stasis that mirrors that of the characters – where he gets the most mileage. These wry bits of observational humor demonstrate he cares enough to see the world through their eyes. There’s laughter in the film because there’s also life.
Sharrock’s extraordinary capacity for empathy does not merely operate on an abstract level, either. Refugees are not a concept or a trending topic; they are people above all. His humanism resonates on a personal scale through the character of Omar. He’s an emotional entry point into the story but, crucially, not just an avatar for the audience or a helpful guide for how to react to the unfamiliar setting. El-Masry pulls off one of the toughest tasks for any actor, conveying the uncertainty that engulfs the character without ever reading as blank ambiguity. It’s highly specific, and all the more moving for doing so.
At the outset of the film, the camera mostly captures Omar from afar to emphasize just how much he sticks out against the gray island environs. He’s at once dwarfed by the vast coastal landscapes of his waiting station and boxed in by it through the film’s constrictive aspect ratio and flattening lens choices. From this point of view, Omar appears practically inseparable from the bulky case of his oud, the string instrument that represents both a physical and psychological tether to Syria. However, a broken arm wrapped up in a bright pink cast keeps him unable to access the sense of connection it can bring.
Yet as more time passes in this purgatory, “Limbo” captures Omar’s broadening horizons by – ironically – gradually inching the camera closer to him and underlining the vulnerability of El-Masry’s performance. “Limbo” inches inward as Omar begins to open up to his surroundings and the people around him, chiefly his affable sidekick Farhad (Vikash Bhai). But given how much the narrative zigs and zags rather than plows forward, Sharrock would never have anyone believe Omar’s journey is one of acculturation or submitting to the Western way. The progression to explore his interior life feels organic, motivated by Omar’s own emotional reckoning rather than any projection of external forces.
Like the film itself, El-Masry is soulful but never saccharine as he probes the nature of what makes people feel both at home and at ease. Harmony is elusive in “Limbo” but never unattainable, and Sharrock makes a convincing case that true balance comes from realizing the clashing emotions can also coexist. Deadpan has never crackled with such life as it does in this miraculous movie, a stunning synergy of story and style to which all films tackling sensitive social situations should aspire. [A-]
“Limbo” arrives in theaters on April 30.