Navigating the surrealist maze of immigration in… | Little White Lies

Nav­i­gat­ing the sur­re­al­ist maze of immi­gra­tion in Prob­lemista, Lim­bo and Green Border

05 Aug 2024

Green frog puppet and blonde female puppet together.
Green frog puppet and blonde female puppet together.
A new crop of films explor­ing the ten­sion that comes with try­ing to assim­i­late in a new coun­try ring true for one writer.

Find­ing humor in tragedy is a habit that those born into a lit­er­al and metaphor­i­cal fault zone quick­ly become accus­tomed to. Some­days the sheer absur­di­ty of your cir­cum­stances can only be made sense of by a well-craft­ed joke or a time­ly pun, and it’s prob­a­bly why, grow­ing up in Turkey, I learned that a peren­ni­al sense of col­lec­tive mis­for­tune breeds com­e­dy. That’s why Euro­peans are so unfun­ny,” my ele­men­tary school teach­ers told me mat­ter-of-fact­ly. It’s because they have no quo­tid­i­an sense of impend­ing tragedy.”

This gen­er­a­tional wis­dom is cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Sal­vado­ran-Amer­i­can stand-up come­di­an Julio Tor­res’ debut fea­ture Prob­lemista, a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sur­re­al­ist com­e­dy tinged with Tor­res’ sig­na­ture dead­pan humor, sit­u­at­ed some­where between the cringe com­e­dy of Nathan Field­er and the absur­dist antics of Tim Robin­son. The film fol­lows Ale­jan­dro, an aspir­ing toy­mak­er who has immi­grat­ed from El Sal­vador to New York to pur­sue his dreams of work­ing for Has­bro, leav­ing his ever-sup­port­ive moth­er behind to wor­ry in his wake. After los­ing his care­tak­er job at Freezecorp – a fic­ti­tious tech start­up that rents out cryo­genic cham­bers to a range of wealthy clien­tele to hiber­nate into the future –π Ale­jan­dro is giv­en a dead­line of 30 days to find a spon­sor for his work visa in order to stay in the coun­try. With the upturn­ing of an imag­i­nary hour­glass, our endear­ing­ly ret­i­cent pro­tag­o­nist begins his race against time to find a way out of the Kafkaesque maze of Amer­i­can immi­gra­tion law and escape the immi­nent threat of depor­ta­tion. An anx­i­ety-induc­ing count­down com­mences, at the end of which looms the greater threat of legal era­sure – one that many hope­ful-would-be-cit­i­zens know all too well.

In the cur­rent – dare I say hell­ish – land­scape of our glob­al­ized world, wired togeth­er by dis­crete net­works of bureau­crat­ic pow­er that remain invis­i­ble to those out­side of their realm of influ­ence, we’ve become habit­u­at­ed to the idea that the geopo­lit­i­cal stand­ing of the ground one learns to walk on deter­mines their life’s tra­jec­to­ry. Most peo­ple take their free­dom to roam the world for grant­ed until they decide it’s time to set­tle down and find their foot­ing in a des­ti­na­tion equal parts exot­ic and home­ly. Those of us who don’t have the lux­u­ry to sim­ply go back where we came from’ are left to nav­i­gate the con­vo­lut­ed maze of visa appli­ca­tion fees, res­i­dence per­mit appoint­ments and cit­i­zen­ship eli­gi­bil­i­ty require­ments on our own, under the pity­ing looks of gov­ern­ment offi­cials who resent us for our mis­guid­ed attempts at legal assimilation.

It goes with­out say­ing that this path of least resis­tance is reserved exclu­sive­ly for those with time and mon­ey to spare, as a means of smooth­ing out the rocky cross to the oth­er side, where the grass is pur­port­ed­ly green­er. But when the dif­fer­ence between risk­ing depar­ture and being left behind is a ques­tion of choos­ing life over death, the illu­sion of indi­vid­ual choice dis­si­pates. As one of the many hope­ful refugees brav­ing the jour­ney across the green bor­der between Poland and Belarus in Agniezs­ka Holland’s epony­mous epic points out indig­nant­ly: their only sin is hav­ing been born to the worst pass­port in the world. It is the glob­al stamp of dis­ap­proval that jus­ti­fies the suf­fer­ing they endure at the hands of bor­der patrol offi­cers and in the name of nation­al secu­ri­ty. Such is the fate of the des­ig­nat­ed ille­gal’ immigrant.

But what of the one per­mit­ted through the pearly gates of that ever-elu­sive Gar­den of Eden of the West that promis­es sal­va­tion in end­less finan­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty? Their bur­den to bear, though at first glance remark­ably less tinged with hos­til­i­ty, is one of a more implic­it sort: they con­tort their bod­ies to fit the rub­ber-stamped mold of the mod­el minor­i­ty and tread soft­ly on shaky ground so as to make as lit­tle sound as pos­si­ble when enter­ing the Room Where It Hap­pens – see Ale­jan­dro, chan­nelling his dis­com­fi­ture in a boun­cy gait as he makes his way through the streets of New York from temp job to temp job.

As such the immi­grant is more wary of their cir­cum­stances than peo­ple tend to give them cred­it for: they rec­og­nize the absur­di­ty of their predica­ment but with the lim­it­ed options they have at their dis­pos­al are unable to van­quish it. They have no choice but to com­ply with the non­sen­si­cal rules that are imposed on them as a pro­ce­dur­al mea­sure. They are giv­en the impos­si­ble task of mak­ing sense out of non­sense; a cohe­sive nar­ra­tive out of a tan­gle of open-end­ed sto­ry­lines. To hone the absur­di­ty of Alejandro’s plight Prob­lemista jux­ta­pos­es the docile immi­grant with the enti­tled native out­cast through the anti-antag­o­nist Eliz­a­beth (an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly bedrag­gled Til­da Swin­ton), who invokes her pow­er as a born and bred Amer­i­can cit­i­zen with the promise to spon­sor Alejandro’s work visa in exchange for free­lance work. Imme­di­ate­ly we rec­og­nize the murky pow­er imbal­ance obscured by the quirky nar­ra­tive and the col­or­ful set pieces. Eliz­a­beth is unkempt, loud and con­stant­ly on the look­out for some­one to blame for her self-induced mis­ery: in oth­er words, she becomes a real prob­lemista” for any­one and every­one who comes into con­tact with her; the stark oppo­site of the infan­tile Ale­jan­dro who acqui­esces to sleep­ing on the couch of his Bush­wick rental and takes up odd jobs to make ends meet.

Nev­er­the­less, Eliz­a­beth appears like an unseem­ly bea­con of light guid­ing the way out of the fog of uncer­tain­ty that threat­ens to smoth­er Alejandro’s dreams of becom­ing a toy mak­er for good. She rep­re­sents an overt if unlike­ly fig­ure of hope, gal­va­nized by her obses­sion with curat­ing an art exhi­bi­tion for her late husband’s bizarrely sen­ti­men­tal egg paint­ings. The sym­bol­ism of the eggs is fair­ly straight­for­ward: they are meant to evoke safe­ty, preser­va­tion, (re)birth; the phys­i­cal embod­i­ment of the moth­er­ly prin­ci­ple that through dili­gent care and lenient patience one can push through the hard exte­ri­or of the out­er shell and find sal­va­tion in that cov­et­ed first gulp of air.

Two people, a man and a woman, standing on a city street next to a sign advertising a special offer.

So it’s no sur­prise that eggs appear as a recur­ring motif of promised free­dom in anoth­er con­tem­po­rary nar­ra­tive revolv­ing around the lived expe­ri­ence of immi­grants, brav­ing the jour­ney to the Glob­al North with the hope of start­ing anew. In Ben Sharrock’s 2020 fea­ture Lim­bo, a for­lorn group of asy­lum seek­ers wait out the pro­cess­ing of their refugee claims on a remote Scot­tish island, spend­ing their days watch­ing box sets of Friends and being sub­ject­ed to gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed cul­tur­al aware­ness class­es to bet­ter assim­i­late into civ­i­lized” soci­ety once on the main­land. At one point Farhad, one of the hope­ful British cit­i­zens-to-be from Afghanistan, indulges in his fan­ta­sy of hav­ing eggs sun­ny side up” every morn­ing before work.

Long­ing for the cus­tom­ary sta­bil­i­ty of a 9‑to‑5 job and the every­day rit­u­als that pro­lif­er­ate around it. It strikes the West­ern view­er as strange for some­one to long for what is such a triv­ial part of dai­ly life for the aver­age cin­ema­go­er. After all, who would dream of hav­ing a bull­shit job that offers lit­tle to no sat­is­fac­tion in the long run even if they got to have eggs for break­fast every day? But the aver­age West­ern view­er may not recog­nise the lack of a viable alter­na­tive for peo­ple who have been sub­ject­ed to bru­tal­i­ty beyond their com­pre­hen­sion. It is a seem­ing­ly naïve yet emo­tion­al­ly true sen­ti­ment: the val­ue of rou­tine com­forts one takes for grant­ed can only be appre­ci­at­ed by those who have been deprived of them.

Much like Farhad’s fan­ta­sy of wak­ing up and don­ning a suit for a thank­less office job on the dot every morn­ing, when I was in high school I had a recur­ring fan­ta­sy of leav­ing the vio­lent polit­i­cal tur­moil of my home­town behind for the pris­tine monot­o­ny of the Amer­i­can sub­urbs. As the idiom goes, it was my hap­py place. I sketched out the res­i­den­tial cul-de-sac I’d live on in my head, the extracur­ric­u­lar clubs I’d join and the temp jobs I’d take on dur­ing sum­mer breaks. I want­ed to lose myself in out­dat­ed ideations of the Amer­i­can pas­toral, a vision exac­er­bat­ed by the films of John Hugh­es and the high school teen movie craze of the ear­ly 2000s. Like Farhad, I used the mass media gen­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can cul­ture indus­try to fill my fan­tasies with a quirky cast of char­ac­ters who didn’t have to active­ly wor­ry about bomb threats on their way to school or the abysmal state of a nation­al econ­o­my that drove hordes of young peo­ple to sui­cide as a last resort.

Fan­ta­sy not only func­tions as an escape route for many des­per­ate to flee the dire straits they were born into but also as a nar­ra­tive device of expres­sion. Sur­re­al ele­ments are inter­wo­ven with the plot to bring a much-need­ed touch of humor to the rav­aging real­i­ties of unwant­ed for­eign­ers’ cling­ing onto the hope that some­where out there must be some­thing bet­ter than what they’ve had the courage to leave behind. From Ital­ian auteur, Gia­co­mo Abbruzzese’s lumi­nous debut fea­ture Dis­co Boy rid­dled with ele­ments of mag­i­cal real­ism to Mat­teo Garrone’s Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed epic Io Cap­i­tano, a com­mon fea­ture of con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma cen­tered around the jour­ney of the immi­grant seems to be its fre­quent appli­ca­tion of sur­re­al­ism as a sto­ry­telling device.

It’s as if these fic­tion­al­ized accounts of migra­tion demand some sem­blance of the unre­al to come across as psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble, both for the on-screen pro­tag­o­nists who are going through the unimag­in­able feat of trav­el­ing across the world for a brighter future and the audi­ence who is expe­ri­enc­ing it through them. It requires a cer­tain degree of sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief on the part of the view­er not only for the sake of emo­tion­al res­o­nance but also to qual­i­fy as a viable por­tray­al of the con­flic­tive stages of grief one goes through in such per­son­al states of emer­gency. Whether it be the con­trived maze of greige office rooms that entrap Ale­jan­dro in an illog­i­cal cycle of admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures in Prob­lemista or the imag­ined encounter between sib­lings sep­a­rat­ed by war in Lim­bo, these oth­er­world­ly cin­e­mat­ic ele­ments not only pro­pel the emo­tion­al grav­i­ty of the sto­ries they tell for­ward but also func­tion as cor­rec­tive mea­sures of agency for their heroes, left alone to nav­i­gate their way out of a world reel­ing before their eyes.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum are films which cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly abstain from falling back on the aes­thet­ic short­cuts of a supe­ri­or real­i­ty for the sake of dri­ving home the point of grit­ty real­ism. They bring the audi­ence back to Earth so to speak, forc­ing them to reck­on with their own respon­si­bil­i­ty as tax-pay­ing cit­i­zens of marked­ly xeno­pho­bic gov­ern­ments. The human cost of the ongo­ing human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis is brought to the fore­front of the nar­ra­tive fore­go­ing didac­tic moral­ism. Such is the case made by the afore­men­tioned Green Bor­der, a dev­as­tat­ing por­tray­al of the inter­twin­ing lives of a flock of Mid­dle East­ern and African refugees who become entrapped in No Man’s Land on the Belarus-Poland bor­der. With no home to go back to, we watch as fam­i­lies and chil­dren are passed back and forth between the oppos­ing bor­der con­trol check­points, the civil­ian casu­al­ties of a cru­el game of polit­i­cal ping-pong. For the entire­ty of its two-and-a-half-hour run­time Green Bor­der does not pull any punch­es but it is the epi­logue that bears the brunt of its cham­pi­oned cause: As the same bor­der patrol offi­cers we’ve watched vio­lent­ly deny access to ille­gal’ migrants mere min­utes ago wel­come Ukrain­ian refugees with open arms onto their land, guid­ing them into the busses on route to the safe haven of the EU we can’t help but cringe at the hypocrisy of their per­func­to­ry sym­pa­thy. The mes­sage is clear: the laws that adju­di­cate who is and who isn’t allowed beyond the bor­der are ulti­mate­ly proven to be arbitrary.

The surge in trans­gres­sive cin­e­mat­ic nar­ra­tives that char­ac­ter­ize the per­pet­u­al pre­car­i­ty of the mod­ern’ immi­grant as their modus viven­di harkens back to our cur­rent polit­i­cal moment in time. Ini­tial­ly wel­comed in as a brazen show of leg­isla­tive good­will, come elec­tion sea­son they inevitably become the scape­goat of every eco­nom­ic down­turn and the de fac­to tar­get of hor­ri­fy­ing polit­i­cal cam­paigns that aim to curb the threat of ris­ing immi­gra­tion rates. Should the recent revival of neo-fas­cist sen­ti­ments around the world incen­tivize a col­lec­tive reac­tion, let these excep­tion­al pieces of film­mak­ing be a stark reminder of the press­ing need to cre­ate and engage with art that blurs the line between what is and what isn’t, guid­ing the way toward what could be for all of us involved.

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