"I'm Not Scared" is an Italian film. It is, however, a drastically different picture of Italy than "innocent abroad" movies like "Under The Tuscan Sun" or "Stealing Beauty." It is the second international attempt by award-winning director Gabrielle Salvatores after his masterpiece "Mediterraneo" won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1991.
As an international director, Salvatores has already proven that he is capable of traversing the treacherous divide of language barriers. "I'm Not Scared" thankfully does not fall short of this precedent and comes across with enough fluidity for most viewers to forget that they are reading subtitles.
In the film, Salvatores conveys several seemingly conflicting platforms of existence that make the narrative of this movie very difficult to capture in its entirety. At the center is the story of Michele, an inquisitive boy who is somewhat trapped in a small isolated village in the middle of nowhere. Salvatores does a great job of conveying all of these details without the need to clarify them through dialogue. We see Michele and the rest of the village's children running through fields of tall grass and playing around abandoned structures with whatever they can find to entertain themselves. At the same time Salvatores injects a deep splinter of darkness from the haunting first image, through the rest of the film.
During the opening sequence the phrase "I'm not scared" appears scratched into a shadowy rock face. Even the images of Michele and his friends running through the fields are held atop a core of darkness through excellent cinematography. As the children run and play, the camera jostles just below a comfortable field of vision. Their activities too are not only dangerous and unsanctioned by their parents, but also a little creepy. It is at one such moment that Michele stands up as the voice of reason and not without penalty to himself.
It is at this level that Salvatores sets the stage for Michele to be his central player in his divine hypothesis. Michele first discovers a boy in a hole. He then decides that he is going to help this boy and proceeds to do so based on what he feels he can do as a child. As he discovers more about why the boy is chained in this hole he realizes that the adults of the village are involved and that their role is likely sinister. With every point of realization Michele becomes more distant from his parents and his ability to choose the right course of action, no matter the odds, grows. The narrative that forms is unique in that, instead of a coming-of-age tale, we have a tale that perhaps comments on the value of innocence.
Salvatores is a master of cinematography and with "I'm Not Scared" proves again that he can do the most difficult of shots. It is a great disappointment then that, in this movie, he makes extremely basic errors. Granted, there are only a handful of cringe-worthy moments in "I'm Not Scared," but they are there. There are moments when Salvatores chooses extremely predictable shots that lead into textbook movie moments.
Salvatores does an amazing job of getting great performances and authentic reactions from so many child actors. Giuseppe Cristiano carries the movie like a seasoned veteran. The adults play well too and because Salvatores gives us the children's point of view, the image of the adults is allowed to slowly transform from the authority figures that they are to the corrupt shells that they become.
"I'm Not Scared" is worth seeing if only because no American filmmaker has yet been able to do such a movie without relying heavily on the musical score and the crocodile tears of Oscar-hunting actors. Salvatores' confusing errors are difficult to get past, but the movie continues to haunt like blinding visions of beauty.
