‘Limbo’ is a story of refugees stuck between worlds
Above: Omar (Amir El-Masry) is the protagonist of the film "Limbo." (Photo/Focus Features)
Movie review: "Limbo," written and directed by Ben Sharrock, starring Amir El-Masry, Vikash Bhai.
Omar is feeling lost. His parents are in Istanbul and his brother is still in Syria, engaged in the civil war that is wracking their home country. Omar, though, is stuck in a refugee relocation center located on a remote Scottish island waiting to see if his asylum request to the United Kingdom will ever be granted.
And when I say remote, I mean barren, solitary, wind- and snow-swept, in all ways you can imagine desolate – except for the occasional house, roaming mail-delivery truck and lone phone booth set next to a highway that runs through the stark, grassy countryside.
Omar can’t even play his oud – a stringed lute-type musical instrument – which he carries with him wherever he goes. This is partly because of the cast that encases his right hand. Even more, though, even thinking of the oud throws him back to a time when he was following his grandfather’s trade and becoming a musician known all over Syria. And those memories, which are never far away, are just too painful for him to openly face.
Not that he ever admits this out loud. As the protagonist in British writer-director Ben Sharrock’s film titled, appropriately enough, “Limbo,” Omar – played by Egyptian-born actor Amir El-Masry – has few friends to confide in. And the one who comes closest, Farhad (played by Vikash Bhai), has his own issues – the main one which seems to be a fanboy’s kind of connection with the late Queen singer Freddie Mercury. Farhad, who wears a Mercury-style mustache, goes so far as to steal a chicken and name it – what else? – Freddie.
Yet that’s hardly the strangest thing that occurs in Sharrock’s film, his second attempt at a feature, following 2016’s “Pikadero.” In fact, though “Limbo” is about a man’s being separated from his family – and caught up in the same kind of quest for a better life that faces hundreds of thousands of people across the globe – it’s far from your typical immigrant study.
There are, for example, no scenes of overt violence directed at the refugees. Yes, at one point a “Welcome Refugees” sign is defaced with the word “not” spray-painted on it. And Omar, in particular, gets mocked by a quartet of Scottish teens. But their words of warning that Omar shouldn’t even think of blowing anything up – as if this gentle man would even consider doing such a thing – are, more than anything else, a reflection of how curious they are about this stranger in their strange land. And how little they understand of who and what he is.
Of course, that feeling goes both ways. In truth, it’s not so much what happens in “Limbo” as how Sharrock makes it happen. He affects a tone that, at times, feels funny, other times feels sad and in between feels totally bizarre, which is exactly the right word to describe the film’s overall feel: It’s a study of people – in this case all men – divorced from the reality they were born to, hoping against hope that something will improve, yet finding themselves as if they were caught in a Samuel Beckett play – waiting for something good to happen in a near-surreal world.
The offbeat nature of all this becomes especially apparent during sessions of a class they are required to attend that is aimed at adjusting them to life in the UK – a class, by the way, that is taught by a Scottish couple. In a weirdly wrong-headed attempt to demonstrate to the refugees the difference between simple, friendly fellowship and sexually charged behavior, the teachers break into a quirky, impromptu dance that ends up with a resounding slap in the face.
Another lesson underscores even more the differences in worldviews when, asked to give an example of how to use the imperfect tense in English, one of the refugees says, “I used to have a beautiful house – before it was blown up by coalition forces.”
Pointedly avoiding a standard narrative, Sharrock keeps his plotline spare to a fault. If Omar and his fellow refugees aren’t enduring classes – they’re loitering around, waiting for the mail delivery, taking turns at the lone phone booth, making calls to whomever will answer.
As for Omar himself, he takes long, solo walks, always carrying (but never playing) the oud. He calls his parents, who alternate between encouraging him and then questioning whether they all should have stayed in Syria, like Omar’s brother. He loses two acquaintances from Africa when one is taken away by police and the other runs off to face an unfortunate end. And, ultimately, he engages in a dream sequence, one in which he reunites with his brother and the two rebond over memories of their shared past.
Overall, though, Omar merely endures – waiting, lost but not yet devoid of hope, expecting, if not Beckett’s Godot, at least a glimmer of the immigrant’s dream, in which all things are possible.