Vincenzo Amato leads the cast in this story about leaving your homeland and dreaming of a golden future. Opening in Sicily, onto a landscape made up of nothing but stones it’s not much of a surprise that the farmers there are barely able to scrape a living. It’s an arid, barren, uncomfortable place, and the locals are firm believers in superstition; the biblical reference to seeds falling on stony ground is picked up later with the idea of being transplanted into more fertile soil in the United States. Widower Salvatore Mancuso (Amato) and his little group are lured to America by doctored photographs of gigantic chickens and enormous vegetables. Crialese uses surreal sequences such as Mancuso swimming in a river of milk while a carrot bigger than himself floats by as relief from the scenes of difficulties and discomfort. Mancuso leaves with his aged mother, a healer and symbol of the Old World, his sons and two young women who have been ‘sold’ to wealthy Americans. These girls...
