'Golden" opens door to early immigration travails

What if you learned that the "pursuit of happiness" would doom you to a life of misery? Would you abandon your journey? What if the "land of milk and honey" forced you to live your life treading water? Would you still want to go?

These are some of the questions asked and answered in unexpected ways in Emanuele Crialese's magical "Golden Door," a visually stunning immigration story that is concerned more about the journey than the dreams realized.

It stars Vincenzo Amato (pictured above being comforted by his mother played by Aurora Quattrocchi) in a wonderful, almost wordless, performance as Salvatore Mancuso who lives in a rural Sicily around the turn of the 20th century. Salvatore's twin brother has immigrated to America and Salvatore wants to join him there, especially after he sees postcards from America that depict an onion so large it must be transported by a wheelbarrow and coins blossoming on trees. He gathers his mother, two sons and two women from the local village who have agreed to be mail-order brides, and journeys to the Sicilian port city where they board the ship that is to take them to their new home. At the port, he has a brief, momentary encounter with Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a mysterious Englishwoman who is also trying to enter the United States.

That is the first act of the film. The second act tells of their journey in steerage across the Atlantic and Act 3 depicts their attempts to get through the "Golden Door" at Ellis Island. This may be the first film I've ever seen about immigrants coming to New York that doesn't (1) have the standard shot of the immigrants first sighting of the Statue of Liberty and (2) any exterior scenes set in New York City. All of Act 3 is interior scenes inside the immigration buildings on Ellis Island. It's like the bit in "Godfather Part II" featuring the young Vito Corleone on Ellis Island stretched to a 45-minute running time.

It's the first and third acts that are the special ones, the visually magical ones and the coldly staged ones. Crialese gives us the time to get to know Salvatore and his family in Act 1 so that, while we might not identify with them, we realize that they could represent our grandparents or great grandparents. And we understand the dreams that compelled them to leave the home they knew for the opportunities in a place they were not familiar with.

The third act shows us a lot of those dreams being crushed even before the immigrants can pass through the "Golden Door." The scene in which the brides-to-be are introduced to their future husbands is particularly heartbreaking. And the entire dehumanizing method by which the immigrants are processed to make sure that only those of "genetic quality" are admitted is particularly appalling.

For a reason never explained, Lucy can only enter the country if she is pledged to be married. So during the voyage across the Atlantic, she asks Salvatore, who is obviously fascinated by her, to say the least, to marry her, explaining to him quite specifically that her proposal has nothing to do with love. This entire bit between Lucy and Salvatore was the only unconvincing part of an otherwise special movie experience.

I'm not sure whether "Golden Door" played a Dallas movie house and, if it did, it did not get much attention. That's the one of the beauties of DVDs because they give you the opportunity to see something special even when the local movie houses don't.

Grade: B-