Directed by Matty Brown and written by Brown, Hend Fakhroo, and Yassmina Karajah, The Sand Castle (Netflix) draws us into a porous place somewhere between cope and reality, a space that becomes necessary in the wake of violence and tragedy. Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea and Riman Al Rafeea star as a family who, through circumstances left intentionally vague, have become stranded on an island in the Mediterranean Sea. As the thoughts and fancies of the children draw us into this barren place, we’re with them as they ask their parents: Why are we here? But Yasmine (Labaki) and Nabil (Bakri) don’t respond directly. Not because they don’t have an answer. It’s simply because the burdens of adult pain and worry shouldn’t be for the young to carry.
The Gist: Little Jana (Riman Al Rafeea) has converted the scrub and sand of this island space and the blue-green sea that surrounds it into a fantastical world of whimsy and imagined castles. It’s her bastion against the uncertainty of her family’s current existence. As the sun beats down on them, turning their skin ruddy, Yasmine (Labaki) and Nabil (Bakri) attempt normalcy, gathering the kids for a meal from their meager rations, and cranking on the ancient generator that powers the small lighthouse where they sleep. With the measured obliviousness of a child, Jana dismisses these hardships. But her older brother Adam (Zain Al Rafeea) steals Nabil’s cigarettes and frowns at Yasmine’s assurances. “Why are you acting like everything’s normal? We’re in the middle of nowhere. Will we die, too?”
In time, The Sand Castle draws the viewer deeply into this unreliable landscape, and the quiet moments of familial comfort that persist in spite of everything. Nabil comparing the silhouettes of their spread fingers with Jana, and showing his daughter how to fire up the lighthouse’s beam. Yasmine rustling Adam’s curly hair, and sharing the Arabic pop tunes on his Walkman. But the distance behind Nabil and Yasmine’s eyes turns steadily toward open concern, and there is a telling shot of the family standing together on a sandbar with their battered travel cases. They gaze at the sea, ready to embark, but there is no way to do so. No way to raise help on their jury-rigged CB radio. No route to outrun their past.
As Jana’s dreams twist from childlike escapism into a sense of darkness beyond her years, and Adam grows concerned for her safety, the diminishing well-being of Yasmine and Nabil soon push The Sand Castle toward its resolution. Not necessarily direct answers about how this family, its only castmembers, came to exist within the hope and harshness of this place. But a much harsher reality, one conjured from the memories young Jana is too traumatized to confront head-on.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Nadine Labaki directed and co-wrote Capernaum, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2018, and The Sand Castle reunites her with Zain Al Rafeea, who starred in Capernaum as a troubled boy in the slums of Beirut, Lebanon. And Labaki also starred in Costa Brava, Lebanon, which streams on Netflix.
Performance Worth Watching: There is a wonderful, powerful certitude to the quartet at the center of The Sand Castle. Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, and Riman Al Rafeea establish the majority of the fracturing but still functional dynamic of their onscreen family in the spaces between the lines of the script.
Memorable Dialogue: A couplet is repeated throughout this film; it becomes a kind of hopeful mantra. “In a single breath, beyond the waves, beyond the sky, until we finally reach the shore. Inhale. Exhale. We made it.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Matty Brown, director of The Sand Castle, and Jeremy Snell, the film’s cinematographer, join forces as guides to its enveloping first hour. Even before we began to question what is real and what is an illusion – a dilemma that soon overtakes most everything else, becoming almost unavoidable – Brown and Snell’s work lends a beautiful dimension to an oblong bit of land that in many ways is featureless. Its environment is instead built by the reaching imagination of a child, and what landmarks do exist are developed as a haven for the family that lives here. Their lighthouse dwelling could be a happy place, with its hexagonal walls, spiral staircase to the lantern room, and nooks for bedrolls and teacups. It could be a place of adventure for a kid, just like the thickets of tall reeds and fingers of sandy runoff that ring the island’s environs. But for as immersively as it presents its unique setting, The Sand Castle never lets the viewer shake the sense that this place is not what it seems. Brown and Snell are equally effective as they work with their committed cast to graft a family’s grief – and the confusion felt by children, which they must convert into a coping mechanism just to try and get by – onto the very same spaces that once represented a version of routine.
Our Call: Stream It. The Sand Castle is a contemplative film of studied quiet that processes the violence in our world with the benefit, or very necessity, of a child’s boundless imagination.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.