Limbo

 LIMBO  

Bleak.  The windswept, featureless remoteness of the unnamed Scottish island that provides a slow, unrelenting, and sometimes beautiful, backdrop.  The lives of the central protagonists, a group of refugees seeking asylum in the UK from war, hunger, discrimination, reduced to waiting and waiting for news which might move their cases forward, knowing that it can take years.  The attitudes of many of the locals, lacking empathy and viewing the arrivals with suspicion.  All bleak.

But not the film itself, which is frequently funny and compassionate, despite the darkness of the subject.  The opening scene sets the tone for the ridiculous, Kafkaesque, scenario these men are trapped in.  Helga (the wonderful Sidse Babett Knudsen) demonstrates her version of a sexy dance, and interacts with sidekick Boris (Kenneth Collard) who shows how not to behave towards women in a nightclub.  This is part of the cultural instruction lectures being provided.  It's funny in itself, but even more so when contrasted with the audience it's aimed at, a group of bewildered refugees who are as likely to find themselves in a nightclub as one of their number has of realising hid dream to play for Chelsea.  

The film follows the life of Omar (Amir El-Masry), and Oud player from Syria, and his housemates (from Afghanistan, Sudan and Ghana) in the isolated tatty house that has become their home, while they await the mill of bureaucracy to grind through their requests to stay in the UK.  There is little to do but watch pirate DVDs of Friends, trek to the lonely phone box to call home, and willing the postman to bring some news that would take out of the uncertainty that boxes them in.  And to hope that when the police suddenly swoop it isn't for them.

Omar worries about his parents, living in poverty in Istanbul, and his brother who has stayed in Syria to fight.  He worries if he can still play his Oud, which a plaster on his arm has prevented ever since he escaped his homeland.  He never smiles, for what is there to smile about?  There is only time, going by so slowly, and absurd, alienating encounters.  The filming reflects the desolate nature of this existence, long shots of roads to nowhere, distant horizons that can't be reached.  Little humorous touches, like the stolen chicken named after Freddie Mercury.  And the simple of humanity of these desperate individuals, stripped of dignity but supportive of one another, harbouring their own big and small and ambitions, and clinging on to hope.

With so many politicians and the media constantly dehumanising people who find themselves in this position, this movie is a powerful reminder that they are all human beings just like us, and reminds us of the importance of empathy.  Highly recommended.