Review of I'm Not Scared (2003) by Andrew D — 06 Dec 2009

What comes to mind right now is my thought that perhaps this is the movie Guillermo Del Toro was going for with Panâ??s Labyrinth, a story of a young child with a penchant for games and fantasy who is ennobled by how they interact with the dark, twisted, dangerous adult world that functions as a backdrop. But Gabriele Salvatoresâ?? film unfolds that adult world from the naïve point of view of the child rather than striving for equally balanced screen time for both perspective realms. The child here, Michele, overpowers the fears and doubts propelled by his fantasies to topple the evil of his increasingly estranged reality, rather than pushing his head further into the clouds and away from the oppression below. But I do not want to critique Del Toroâ??s imaginative, widely appealing surrealistic film; I want to talk about Salvatoresâ?? expansive, quite eclectic psychological one.

The film opens by telling us we are in 1978, during Italyâ??s â??Years of Lead,â?? as informally dubbed the period in Italy which gives context to certain shocking turning points in the plot. But it is better not having as much knowledge of that, as I didnâ??t when watching this movie for the first time. Indeed, we feel as if weâ??ve been placed in the backwoods underside of the Italy modern films from or set in that country donâ??t tend to show us, not to mention with such intimate, subjective detail. The film takes place in a fictional town in Southern Italy, during the hottest summer of the century. The town is of unprecedented smallness, and it appears to be dying out. The community childrenâ??s idea of fun and games has to do with exploring abandoned farmhouses, agreeing to be coerced into doing humiliating or dangerous things if you lose a race and trading toy trucks for secrets.

The mystery that pervades the entire film compels me to advise that discovering any details of the plot itself is putting yourself at a disadvantage. We are â??kept in the darkâ?? (inside joke) as the fear, naivete and willpower of young Michele only allows us to discover things a little bit at a time, creating a great deal of tension purely in our minds. What adds to the inescapable mystique is that we are never entirely sure of how to pigeonhole its genre, and so we are never quite able to predict what will happen next. By the ten-minute mark, we are gratified by a tell-tale sign of a psychological thriller, but we are never hurtled into the kind of tone and mood we expect. The vivid scenery---many views of fields and hills of wheat, this endless land being the backyard for the town children and the setting of their childhood adventures---employs an acutely emboldened, clear-cut primary color scheme to depict how Michele, as a nine-year-old boy, sees the world, fixating on particular items of fascination with close-ups. The seemingly broad, overtly emotional music score, though chiefly performed by a string quartet, from the start permeates the film too much for one to expect any dramatic tension to build, and boy does one turn out to be wrongâ?¦.