The film is touching, imaginative and makes the best of its cash through a minimalist skill that shows Crialese to be a genuinely original director.
Golden Door (2007)
Runtime: 1 hr 58 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vincenzo Amato, Aurora Quattrocchi, Vincent Schiavelli, Andrea Prodan
DVD Info
Release:
Aug 1, 2008
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Keep Case
- Anamorphic Widescreen - 2.35
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - Italian
- Subtitles - English, French, Spanish - Optional
Additional Release Material:
- Introduction by Martin Scorsese
- Featurette - Making of
Reviews
The details of this chaotic odyssey to the New World are so intricately and poignantly handled that throughout a voice in your head insists: this is how it must have been.
It’s an eye-opening insight into pre-Virgin Atlantic travel, beautifully acted by its mainly Italian cast and guaranteed to make you count your blessings.
Making the most of an evidently limited budget, Crialese makes the Promised Land seem as poignantly out of reach to us as it is to his tragic characters.
Except during the pointed and crisply staged scenes of testing and quarantine, his movie feels thoroughly adrift.
His excellent new film gives us the fierceness without the syrup: a solidly constructed film with a brilliant visual sense, tremendous performances and an eloquent, dreamy sense of time and place. It held me in every frame.
Gorgeous to look at, unfashionably optimistic and quirkily seductive, this is a robust joy of a movie. It’s certainly one of my favourite releases of the year so far.
A wonderfully poetic film offering a fresh perspective on America's early immigrants, Golden Door is as affecting as it is innovative
A powerful look at the quirks of human nature, weaving in a subtle but overwhelmingly powerful political message.
The film's cinematography by Agnès Godard is breathtaking at times, especially early on during exterior scenes.
Crialese presents enough historical detail to give many 2nd and 3rd generation Americans today an idea of what physical and mental scrutiny their grandparents might have been subjected to in order to be accepted through the "Golden Door."
The journey to America by an Italian peasant and his family, conveying their yearning for a new life in scenes of magical realism.
Although the movie's plot line is rather flimsy and its characters somewhat distant, the movie's images are hard to forget.
The early parts require some patience, but the film richly rewards that patience. I know of no film that so patiently and so completely documents the Ellis Island experience.
So enjoyable and visually stimulating is the experience, it's tough to knock Crialese's Door.
Although it has a gorgeous, lyrical visual style, it contains no stirring speeches or sentimentality.
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