“The Sand Castle” is made up of intentionpartner basic elements: an abandoned island, a creaky elderly weightlesshoparticipate, an intermittently toiling radio. And at its caccess 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 defering and scavenging, hoping and praying. Help, they hope, will soon come their way. But what at first experiences appreciate a up-to-date-day “Robinson Crusoe” adventure soon turns into someleang unwiseer and altogether more timely. While Matty Brown’s dreamy film perestablishs more appreciate a children’s fable than the harrothriveg thriller it sometimes flirts with becoming, its oblique stab at storyinestablishing finishs up muddling its driven vision and well-intfinished message.
Survival stories hinge on the grit and resilience of its characters. Food is infrequent and recent water elusive. Sleep is cforfeit 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 grown-ups 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 center stays mostly on Jana (Riman Al Rafeea), the juvenileer 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 defering for someleang. Or someone. For help, that much is clear, but also for a way to escape the dangers they come apass in that inhospitable if attrenergetic inefficient 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 recents widecasts about refugees on capsized boats are the only hint of Jana and her family’s brimming situation. Instead, “The Sand Castle” perestablishs almost appreciate a riff on “Life of Pi,” where the clearly fanciful imagination of its child protagonist may well be hiding a more dangery truth best kept at bay. Those visions of bodies we grasp come apassing — not to allude a juvenileer 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 grasping the camera at unconsoleably seal levels — so much so that ants, flies, blades of grass and grains of sands normally get up the bulk of the screen. This is a truth not fair filtered thraw the eyes of a juvenileer 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 (perestablished by Zain Al Rafeea) is a ball of angst and despair, only eventupartner taking up the responsibility of caring for Jana when tragedy after tragedy bedescends their family.
It is that latter bit of casting, of course, which tees up the very conversations “The Sand Castle” wants to access: 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 perestablish son to his establisher straightforwardor and brother to his genuine-life sister is a determinedly stimulating detail that may present canny watchers the right lens thraw which to suss out what is repartner 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 cryptic object ecombines under the sand, a storm ravages the weightlesshoparticipate). But they’re all apprehendd with such a fractured sense of narrative (it’s always clear we’re not always getting the brimming picture of what’s happening), that they experience more appreciate escapeting, nightmarish visions than concrete events. This is all by depict, of course. Brown desirees us to stay wilean Jana’s perspective. But what this does is obstreatment, perhaps all too clearly, the harrothriveg truth of what’s taking place. It results in a appraise appreciate this one, that needs to skate over particular plot points in order to evade spoiling what the film itself wants to treat as a strong third act uncover. 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-uncomferventing leave oution 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 lengthy for Brown to finpartner pull the curtain (or the rug from under us, depfinishing on how you experience its narrative style) that its inspirent 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 perestablish in the face of trauma is more intriguing as a concept than as a film; inspirent as a political plea, but ultimately much too insular in its storyinestablishing to land as firmly as it should.
