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