The Sand Castle Review: Netflix’s Enigmatic Lebanese Film With A Significant Message
The Sand Castle is a Lebanese film that surprised Netflix by becoming its most-viewed film in just a few days. There are an infinite number of films and series with castaways and deserted islands in circulation, which is why a film like The Sand Castle, available on Netflix from January 25, 2025, certainly did not start with the favor of the prediction. Yet that of Matty Brown, here at work before having directed several highly decorated short films, finds a way to attract the attention and interest of the viewer with a story that changes in its skin and registers until the final revelation. Which does not allow the user to take measures and create expectations regarding the evolutionary trajectories of the story and the characters that animate it. The merit of a script, written in six hands by Hend Fakhroo, Yassmina Karajah, and the director himself, who makes the genetic mutation the modus operandi to make developments and conclusions unpredictable.
Nadine Labaki he never had time to waste. This is testified by her artistic career, which first saw her make an incredibly short apprenticeship for a film woman born in Baadbata, Lebanon, and then put her hand to never banal projects, especially for their political echo, in which was spent in every way, both in front of and behind the room. Projects that impose a certain type of responsibility. Projects like Caramel, finished shooting on the eve of the war with Israel, in which a group of femmes discusses the daily condition of the Libyan woman; And Now Where Are We Going?, a story of an isolated community of Christians and Muslims; as Capernaum – Chaos and miracles, nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film and how The Sand Castle, available on Netflix. Works all written, directed, and interpreted by Labaki, which also highlighted one more than remarkable progression in his wisdom in the use of the cinematographic medium. His last effort, the one we are about to talk about, is the most experimental, complex, and in a certain sense mannerist in form, despite the classicism of the concept and the awareness of having to reach a transversal audience, even more because it takes charge of a universal message and incredibly current.
The Sand Castle Review: The Story Plot
The Sand Castle revolves around a bourgeois family, made up of Yasmine and Nabil and their two children, Adam and Jana, lost on a’’ desert island. As a home, they have comfortably adapted an old and colorful lighthouse that juggles the southern peak of the heavenly strip of land, and every day they try to get in touch with the outside through an old radio transmitter, confident that the light of their temporary refuge can do the rest. The problem is that they seem to have been there for several days now and no one has yet come to save them. Moreover, it is not known, except in the Cesarini area, what inauspicious events brought them to an earthly paradise destined to be transformed with the passing of the minutes into hell in the middle of the sea. It is here that the waltz of genres is consumed on which the narrative architecture of a chameleon film is based, which takes on different features along the timeline before assuming the definitive one.
We thus pass from the familiar drama to the classic survival movie, from the supernatural in which the uncanny takes shape with a foreign force that alters the nature of what is known to horror with and without presence, before leaving the witness once and for all metaphor. The premises of The Sand Castle are all in all rather simple: a bourgeois family, made up of Yasmine (Labaki) and Nabil (Ziad Bakri) and their two children (brother and sister also in real life), Adam (Zain Al Rafeea, in the second collaboration with the director) and Jana (Riman Al Rafaeea) are lost on a desert island.
As a dwelling, they have comfortably adapted to an old and colorful lighthouse that towers over the southern peak of the heavenly strip of land and every day they try to contact the outside through an old radio transmitter, confident that the light of their temporary refuge can do the rest. The problem is that they seem to have been there for several days now, and no one has yet arrived to get them to safety. The shining and dreamy patina that permeates the island slowly, however, thins, revealing an underground presence, with an antithetical spirit compared to what the images evoke at first to the viewer. A presence that animates the water, which seems to come out of the sand, which animates the objects and has an echo also in the protagonists, gradually besieged by something that seems to come from outside and from inside at the same time. Maybe from the past and perhaps from something located beyond the island where they seem to have got stuck.
The Sand Castle Review and Analysis
Those who know Nadine Labaki’s filmography will be able to trace some of the narrative archetypes typical of the Lebanese director and interpreter, from the idea of isolation, which always opens up to a double and often idiosyncratic interpretation, to a childish point of view. The Sand Castle starts like this since the voiceover that resounds in the viewer’s ears is that of little Jana, but what she says immediately suggests how what the film shows is not exactly what it seems. A bitter paradise, which slowly turns into hell on Earth, indeed, hell in the middle of the sea, in which the filmmaker decides to mix horror with ghosts and with presence. In the great compositional imprint, almost pictorial, the director dissects the space, to confuse the viewer, and in this fragmentation, the evocative power of the film, is searched in tight shots, in the scenographic details, in the objects and the small animals. In them the body takes shape uncanny, a foreign force that alters the nature of what is known, making it alien, adverse, and almost monstrous in transforming beauty into ugly.
A process that increases hand in hand with the will of the room to superimpose its gaze on that of the protagonists lost more and more in an existential limbo between the inner and outer world, reality, and memories. The nightmare in the eye of the beholder. Here then The Sand Castle reveals its deeply metaphorical nature (as its title suggests after all), becoming the classic “grainbreaker film”, which slowly digs into the experiences of the characters and into the nature of the island that inhabit as if the two were mutually dependent. The result is a fascinating and at times distressing film which, as usual for the type to which it belongs, is played all in the final revelation and in the effectiveness with which he comes to show it to the viewer. One way that in this case is rather elementary, even in the cryptic patina during the minute even too sought after, but still felt.
Everything takes shape and substance on the screen thanks to the work in front and behind the camera. In front four performers give body and intensity to the changing emotions of their respective characters. Among these, the most high-sounding name in the cast available to Brown stands out, that is Nadine Labaki. The Lebanese actress and director puts at the service of the work and the figure of the mother who has been entrusted with all her immense skill and stage presence, offering the public another extraordinary and moving interpretation capable of leaving her mark as it was time for Caramel or Capernaum – Chaos and miracles. She is the terminal of an acting that allows the film to touch different strings. The packaging takes care of the rest, showing great formal care and remarkable directorial experimentation. The American filmmaker, with the complicity of the director of photography Jeremy Snell, brings to the screen a sequence of shots and technical solutions with a strong visual impact that allow images to attract the viewer’s eye.
The work before Matty Brown, known among professionals for its long apprenticeship on the short distance, is characterized by a series of ups and downs that make it discontinuous. The main responsibility is a script that on the one hand proposes an interesting and unpredictable genetic mutation that travels between the ground, the supernatural and the metaphorical, on the other the lack of balance and the artificial mechanics that accompany the passages of tone and genres depotentiates its effectiveness. However, we think about the excellent direction, the formal care, and the photographic impact of the images, to allow The Sand Castle to keep the viewer to himself, to whom the film also gives another great interpretation of an extraordinary and intense Nadine Labaki.
The Sand Castle Review: The Last Words
A deeply metaphorical film in which Nadine Labaki tests herself with formal care and a directorial experimentation that we had not yet seen them face, despite some solutions already tried and a rather classic development that sometimes makes punches with a hermeticism sought at every cost. Behind the usual significant message, this time particularly delicate and current. Movies from Lebanon filmed, staging, and visual elements are beautiful. There is a mixed truth and semi-fantasy imagination. But the story is very indie. Not a true movie that is attached to the island. By trying to put a family puzzle on an abandoned island that has items, utensils, and even accommodation with property Ending with the strange events that come continuously but there is no word to explain to the general audience to keep up until the final ending to the average answer. But it’s not new because there are many things already done. It may look like Get along well with the situation of the country of origin. But for the general audience, it’s too difficult to understand while watching. Yes, can pass. Except wanting to see a beautiful picture work It is advisable to try to watch.
Cast: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Director: Matty Brown
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars)
The Sand Castle Review: Netflix’s Enigmatic Lebanese Film With A Significant Message - Filmyhype
Director: Matty Brown
Date Created: 2025-01-28 14:01
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