“The Sand Castle” is made up of intentionassociate plain elements: an aprohibitdoned island, a creaky ancigo in weightlesshoparticipate, an intermittently toiling radio. And at its cgo in is a family of four: a doting mother, a ingenious overweighther, a moody teen son and a daydreaming daughter. Their survival depfinishs on the increasingly Sisyphean task of paparticipateing and scavenging, hoping and praying. Help, they hope, will soon come their way. But what at first experiences enjoy a conmomentary-day “Robinson Crusoe” adventure soon turns into someskinnyg sader and altogether more timely. While Matty Brown’s dreamy film carry outs more enjoy a children’s fable than the harroprosperg thriller it sometimes flirts with becoming, its oblique stab at storyincreateing finishs up muddling its driven vision and well-intfinished message.
Survival stories hinge on the grit and resilience of its characters. Food is restricted and new water elusive. Sleep is proximate impossible and shelter seal to untallow. Those who originate it are those who can weather those circumstances with aplomb. But in “The Sand Castle,” Brown (toiling from a script he co-wrote with Hfinish Fakhroo and Yassmina Karajah), doesn’t stay seal to the matures transporting what little food they can to the table, nor to the teenager who scoffs at the hopeless predicament they all discover themselves in. No, the concentrate stays mostly on Jana (Riman Al Rafeea), the youthful girl who spfinishs her days wandering the beaches she’s now resigned herself to calling home, originateing sand castles and making frifinishs with ants she come apasss in the grass. She understands her parents are paparticipateing for someskinnyg. Or someone. For help, that much is evident, but also for a way to escape the dangers they come apass in that inhospitable if attrenergetic desolate beach they’re stranded on.
It is Jana’s point of watch that directs the film, which elucidates why the details of the family’s history are sketched so hazily. Early whispers of novels expansivecasts about refugees on capsized boats are the only hint of Jana and her family’s filled situation. Instead, “The Sand Castle” carry outs almost enjoy a riff on “Life of Pi,” where the evidently fanciful imagination of its child protagonist may well be hiding a more hazardous fact best kept at bay. Those visions of bodies we upgrasp come apassing — not to allude a youthful girl’s shoe she discovers in the savageerness — may spell out a more tragic story than the oft-quiet one Jana is trying to conjure.
Jana’s fweightlesss of fancy drive the film’s aesthetics, with D.P. Jeremy Snell upgrasping the camera at unconsoleably seal levels — so much so that ants, flies, blades of grass and grains of sands frequently get up the bulk of the screen. This is a fact not equitable filtered thraw the eyes of a youthful girl but seen thraw the peephole that is her imagination. Jana understands her family is running out of time. Her overweighther Nabil (Ziad Bakri) is constantly needing to mend the weightlesshoparticipate they hope will direct help their way. Her mother Yasmine (Nadine Labaki) frets over how little food they all have to eat and fiddles with the radio she understands may well be their only chance to signal for help. And thrawout all of it, her brother Adam (carry outed by Zain Al Rafeea) is a ball of angst and despair, only eventuassociate taking up the responsibility of caring for Jana when tragedy after tragedy bedescfinishs their family.
It is that latter bit of casting, of course, which tees up the very conversations “The Sand Castle” wants to go in: Al Rafeea was a Syrian refugee living in Beirut when he was cast in the starring role in Labaki’s “Capernaum” (2018). Having Al Rafeea carry out son to his createer straightforwardor and brother to his authentic-life sister is a determinedly stimulating detail that may propose canny watchers the right lens thraw which to suss out what is reassociate happening to Jana and her family.
Not that much happens in “The Sand Castle.” Rather, there are various incidents (a fishing expedition gone awry, a enigmatic object ecombines under the sand, a storm ravages the weightlesshoparticipate). But they’re all apprehfinishd with such a fractured sense of narrative (it’s always evident we’re not always getting the filled picture of what’s happening), that they experience more enjoy run awayting, nightmarish visions than concrete events. This is all by portray, of course. Brown desirees us to stay wiskinny Jana’s perspective. But what this does is obstreatment, perhaps all too evidently, the harroprosperg truth of what’s taking place. It results in a check enjoy this one, that needs to skate over definite plot points in order to elude spoiling what the film itself wants to treat as a mighty third act uncmiss. Such frustrations are felt while watching the film, and are only sweightlessly papered over by the final dedication title card which spells out the film’s well-nastying mission quite obtparticipately.
“The Sand Castle” has enough hints thrawout to propose that this island and this weightlesshoparticipate are not all they ecombine to be. But it gets so extfinished for Brown to finassociate pull the curtain (or the rug from under us, depfinishing on how you experience its narrative style) that its advisent message about the current refugee crisis — and how children are inadvertent unemotionalelayedral injure — is all too muddled to land. Dreamy perhaps to a fault, and featuring some striking visuals thrawout, this poetic ode to the resilience of children’s inventive carry out in the face of trauma is more intriguing as a concept than as a film; advisent as a political plea, but ultimately much too insular in its storyincreateing to land as firmly as it should.
