The New World

FIRE AT SEA (B) - This lethargic documentary has its moments. Its downfall is the filmmakers' misguided ambition.

Ostensibly about the plight of refugees who invariably need rescue near the Sicilian island Lampedusa, most of the movie follows a local boy, Samuele, 12, as he traipses around on his various Tom Sawyer missions. Samuele is a lively kid -- he has exaggerated adult mannerisms and the speaking style of a Tony Soprano underling -- but, being a kid, he's just not that interesting.

Samuele is the son and grandson of fishermen, and we slowly get to visit his father on the boat, and there are interludes with the boy's grandmother, who reminds me of my own Italian grandmother, constantly toddling around the kitchen. (She also makes up a bed better than a sailor can.) It is the grandmother who lends the movie its name, as she recalls her own father and uncles trawling in the waters during World War II, when the navy would light up the sky with during battles, creating a "fire at sea."

Samuele bums around with a pal trying to perfect his slingshot skills, terrorizing birds and cacti alike. He also ends up at the eye doctor, getting diagnosed with a lazy eye, which requires an eye patch to strengthen that eye. Another doctor tends to some of the migrants, including a mother lucky to be alive and with a viable fetus. Another random character is a local DJ who takes requests, including from the grandmother to her sickly husband.

The plight of the migrants comes off as both dehumanizing and demoralizing. They get herded like cattle and photographed like criminals. Sometimes all the coast guard workers can do is dredge and count the bodies. Foreboding and death haunt almost every scene. Even the mayday pleas can give you a shiver. Their voices drift through the night sky just like the DJ's tones do.

This is all assembled elegantly by Gianfranco Rosi, whose previous efforts all seem to have interesting premises. Here, he slows to the rhythms of the sleepy island, and his camera lingers over the faces of the migrants, faces that mostly communicate subtle fear and exhaustion.

Too much depiction of the refugees' travails might have been too much to take. But too little of it -- especially contrasted with the safe, traditional way of life of the locals -- comes off as a bit dismissive. Rosi needed a better balance to tell this important story.