Capernaum is a Labanese film about a 12 year old boy, Zain, that sues his parents for bringing him to a world in which they can't take a good care of him. We're shown the hard things that he was through on life, and in the end of it all we should ask ourselves - do we have the right to judge people without walking in their shoes? Does anyone have?
Well...this movie isn't bad, but it has a lot of problems. Let's start from the things that I did like - Zain's acting was really solid, the film is pretty well-shot and edited, and I did enjoy to an extent from some parts of the story. And yeah, the Ethiopian baby is cute. That's about it.
Now, this film has a big problem. One big, fat, unignorable problem - it's super shallow. Yes, I was somewhat invested on Zain's character. He went through hard things, and it's pretty hard to not feel anything. But this film - from its message, the way it's portrayed to the characters, there's nothing there whatsoever. If I was to compare Capernaum to another film, it would be to Bicycle Thieves, but while BT succeeds in communicating an interesting message, portraying a layered problem and telling a pretty interesting story, Capernaum just throws at you that hard lives of Zain and that's about it.
So, to conclude it all - the film didn't make me suffer. It was pretty good on the technical level, and the plot isn't bad, but when digging into it it turns out to be quite shallow and not that interesting. Feeling a 5.7 on this one.
Well...this movie isn't bad, but it has a lot of problems. Let's start from the things that I did like - Zain's acting was really solid, the film is pretty well-shot and edited, and I did enjoy to an extent from some parts of the story. And yeah, the Ethiopian baby is cute. That's about it.
Now, this film has a big problem. One big, fat, unignorable problem - it's super shallow. Yes, I was somewhat invested on Zain's character. He went through hard things, and it's pretty hard to not feel anything. But this film - from its message, the way it's portrayed to the characters, there's nothing there whatsoever. If I was to compare Capernaum to another film, it would be to Bicycle Thieves, but while BT succeeds in communicating an interesting message, portraying a layered problem and telling a pretty interesting story, Capernaum just throws at you that hard lives of Zain and that's about it.
So, to conclude it all - the film didn't make me suffer. It was pretty good on the technical level, and the plot isn't bad, but when digging into it it turns out to be quite shallow and not that interesting. Feeling a 5.7 on this one.