6A — Monday, January 23, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Fire at Sea’ focuses on obscure 
Italian adolescent over crisis

With more emphasis on the daily life of a young boy, the otherwise 
shocking footage of North African refugees feels secondary

The first The xx album was 

one of the best self-contained 
releases of the last decade. 
It’s a record with a sound 
that appeared to come from 
nowhere. There was no larger 
media narrative and no grand 
purpose — just a series of sounds 
that seemed to line up in perfect 
sequence with each other.

2009’s xx is an album without 

a single wasted note. It’s a quiet 
work that never overplays its 
hand, with only three musicians 
working in harmony with mini-
mal overdubs. They used empty 
space to their advantage more 
than any other band, keeping the 
guitar riffs light and the vocals 
shy. The most sprawling, epic 
track xx offers is still only a two-
minute intro instrumental.

Yes, The xx arrived completely 

formed, fully mature and totally 
compelling. Yet, there was some 
nervousness about the group’s 
future. If you make a perfect, 
tight, mistake-free record at the 
beginning of your career, where 
do you go from there?

The closest analogue to The 

xx had already suffered a worri-
some fate. New York City’s Inter-
pol, one of the leaders of the city’s 
then-revitalized guitar scene that 
also included The Strokes and 
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, put out Turn on 
the Bright Lights in 2002 to criti-
cal acclaim and fanfare.

Like xx, Turn on the Bright 

Lights is a moody, lonely, unmis-
takably modern record. It hides 
its feelings behind obscure lyrics 
and fine-tunes its instrumental 
arrangements to achieve awe-
inspiring efficiency. While Inter-
pol is more traditionally “rock” 
than The xx, both bands’ debuts 
are melancholy masterpieces.

Once a band hits a perfect for-

mula, it’s hard to improve. Inter-
pol followed up Bright Lights 
with 2004’s Antics, a very good 
album that nonetheless feels like 
Bright Lights, Part Two. There’s 
nothing especially wrong with it, 
but it lacks a spark, because we 
have heard all these songs before.

However, attempts to expand 

on the band’s signature sound 
fell flat, first with 2007’s Our 
Love to Admire and then with 
two more follow-up records. 
Greater ambitions and a desire 
for a more “epic” scale to their 
songs opened the band up to mis-
steps and songs filled with hot 
air, which were both antithetical 
to what made Interpol great. The 
band never solved the problem of 
how to evolve, stay great and stay 
true to themselves all at the same 
time.

The xx seemed to be follow-

ing the exact same blueprint, as 
2012’s Coexist follows a similar 
path as Antics. Coexist is a most-
ly forgettable rehash of all the 
sounds that made The xx great in 
the first place. It’s a record that 
continues to see the musicians 
do what they’re most talented at, 
but — particularly with its lack of 
well-crafted melodies — Coexist 
never gives a listener much rea-
son to choose it over xx.

At least for this fan, there were 

questions about whether The xx 
would even continue after Coex-
ist. In the years following, the 
group’s lone non-singing member 
— Jamie xx — made a name for 
himself as a solo electronic artist.

2015’s In Colour was a breath 

of fresh air for both Jamie and 
the genre of electronic music. xx 
perfectly captured the vibes of a 
night out in London, balancing 
hard-hitting beats on tracks like 
“Gosh” with more meditative, 
slow-burn songs that showed 
an unusual patience for main-
stream EDM. Plus, the joyful 

Young Thug collaboration “Good 
Times” was the indie fan’s song 
of the summer. As the accolades 
poured in, it became easy to think 
of The xx as one of Jamie’s early 
projects and not his main gig.

But In Colour might actually 

be what saved The xx, because 
earlier this month, a revitalized-
sounding group dropped the 
incredible I See You. It’s a record 
that seems to take everything 
Jamie xx learned while making 
his solo album and seamlessly 
blends it with what made The xx 
already great.

I See You still features the 

unmatched vocal chemistry of 
Oliver Sim and Romy Madley 
Croft, but now there are synthet-
ic horns, piano loops and drum 
tracks programmed for dance-
floor movement. In all, the new 
record sounds like a fresh, fun 
remix album of The xx’s debut. 
It’s an exhilarating reinvention, 
and The xx likely wouldn’t have 
found the key to breaking the 
formula if they hadn’t spent that 
time apart.

“xx seemed to exist infinitely 

in hushed, empty spaces — void 
of vitality and shrouded in shad-
ows,” wrote Daily music writer 
Shima Sadaghiyani in her review 
of the latest The xx album. “In 
contrast … I See You, bursts with 
color.”

There’s a much-too-easy In 

Colour pun to be made here, but 
in truth, that’s exactly what The 
xx needed. The new album solves 
what was once the band’s only 
problem, allowing them to take 
risks and evolve without betray-
ing their talents. The xx are still 
tight, fully formed and mature, 
but they now have an extra 
dimension added onto their sig-
nature sound. They have stepped 
out of a crisp, minimal black-
and-white world and entered a 
dynamic new era of dizzying 
possibilities.

The xx as a multi-dimensional force

LAUREN THEISEN 
Daily Music Columnist

To call “Fire at Sea,” the 

latest 
documentary 
from 

Italian director Gianfranco 
Rosi 
(“Sacro 
GRA”), 
a 

film 
about 
the 
European 

immigration 
crisis 
would 

be a misnomer. Yes, there 
are refugees from Northern 
Africa 
and 

yes, 
their 

heartbreaking 
and often deadly 
journeys 
are 

captured in the 
film, but Rosi’s 
documentary is 
more a series of 
direct 
cinema 

observations 
about 
Lampedusa, 
the 
Sicilian 

island 
at 
which 
many 

arrive, rather than a well-
argued case for tolerance for 
immigrants.

For as much time as the 

refugees 
are 
afforded 
on 

screen — which in the grand 
scheme of things is not all 
that much — the individual 
with the most screen time is a 
young boy, Samuele, a native 
Lampedusa resident with a 
lazy eye who spends much 
of his time playing with his 
toy slingshot. Samuele never 
interacts with the refugees, 
whose trials and tribulations 
as they flee from their war-
torn homelands are reserved 
off-screen or in oral history. 
But the refugees’ haunting 
presence abides. As Samuele 
climbs a tree to saw off a 
bit of wood, or places tiny 
explosives in a row of cacti 
with his friend, or gets his 
eyes examined, it’s impossible 

not to think of the refugees, 
only miles from this sheltered 
adolescent.

But that the refugees — at 

the center of a challenging 
geopolitical 
dilemma 
that 

requires smart filmmaking 
— are only one facet of this 
distracted film is exactly 
Rosi’s 
problem. 
His 
lack 

of focus and the loose ties 
between the various threads 
that guide the film through 

its 
two-hour 

run time deride 
the film from 
making any sort 
of 
meaningful 

statement 
on 

the subject. The 
fuocoammare 
(“fire 
at 
sea” 

in 
Italian) 

captured 
by 

his 
camera 

is 
multifaceted. 
The 
film 

depicts how the residents 
of Lampedusa, new and old, 
relate to the Mediterranean 
Sea. For the refugees, the sea 
was simultaneously a channel 
of escape and a major threat — 
many died from dehydration 
or overcrowding on makeshift 
rubber boats.

For the older residents 

of the island, memories of 
World War II battles on 
the sea looms like the dark 
clouds that muddle the sun’s 
rays. For others, including 
a radio DJ intermittently 
visited, “Fire at Sea” refers 
to an old song, and to others, 
the inclement weather that 
prevents the fishing industry, 
the primary industry of the 
island, from succeeding. A 
general sense of terror on 
boats plagues Samuele, our 
young protagonist, as he gets 
seasick on one occasion and 
loses control of a rowboat on 

another.

But the refugee crisis is just 

one part of many. We never 
see refugees on their way to 
Europe or how citizens of the 
island treat them. We see their 
rescue, their “registration” 
and documentation processes 
orchestrated 
by 
Italian 

officials. We see a meeting 
between a pregnant refugee 
and a doctor. We see a 
makeshift soccer competition, 
in which refugees from each 
country band together to 
compete in a miniature world 
cup. And we see a heart-
wrenching recanting of one 
group’s journey, from Nigeria 
to the Sahara to Libya and 
finally to Lampedusa.

When Rosi fixes his camera 

on the refugees, “Fire at Sea” 
feels like the most relevant 
and powerful documentary 
in ages. Nearly every image 
of the refugees is visually 
arresting. Italian authorities, 
at first, treat the refugees 
like 
diseased 
specimens, 

with gloves and facemasks. 
The refugees are cloaked in 
gold foil, which shimmers 
in the nighttime light like a 
gown at a bourgeoisie gala. 
When he focuses on the other 
residents, which happens all 
too often, the film feels overly 
long and, ultimately, like a 
dud.

Still, Rosi, like his Italian 

contemporaries (see: Paolo 
Sorrentino 
(“Youth”) 
and 

Luca Guadagnino (“A Bigger 
Splash”)), has nailed down 
a breathtaking visual style. 
His filmmaking is intrepid, 
following divers underwater 
or 
tracing 
the 
nighttime 

searchlights 
on 
the 
open 

sea. If the context weren’t 
so devastating, Rosi’s images 
would be beyond enchanting.

B-

“Fire at Sea”

01 Distribution

Michigan Theater

DANIEL HENSEL

Daily Film Editor

Lo Theisen explores the evolving sound of the band over the years

01 DISTRIBUTION

Samuele, the focus of Rosi’s new documentary.

MUSIC COLUMN
FILM REVIEW

