“Aisha”
Movie Review
Written
and directed by Frank Berry, 'Aisha' star Letitia Wright and Josh O'Connor in
their standout performances, a creation of rage and empathy against the clinical
brutality of the ant-migrant bureaucracy. At its center is a brilliant turn
from Leticia Wright as the title character, who flees Nigeria to Ireland to
escape the thugs who killed her father and brother.
Ayesha's
tragic story is that the state is not doing enough to treat her as a person,
whether it's the robotic language of the agents assigned to her asylum or the
petty power trips of the idiots who run the detention center where Ayesha
currently resides. It is quietly handled but powerfully provocative, revealing
the mixture of cynicism, self-aggrandizement, and brutality for the sake of
brutality that often defines European approaches to migrant problems.
A
bright spot in Aisha's life emerges in the form of Connor, played by Josh
O'Connor, the night-shift watchman at the center who is happy to bend the rules
to allow Aisha to cook her own halal food and simply treat her like a fellow
human being. As Wright and O'Connor begin to express themselves to each other,
a more tentative romance begins to develop. Connor has his own tragic past, so
while he can't relate to Ayesha's particular plight, he deeply understands her
fear and trauma, and the pair's unsettling conversations about their pasts are
deeply moving.
Western Europe's
approach to the migrant crisis has been one of its worst moral failings this
millennium, but capturing its full extent may be too much for any drama. To
bring her attention to the nuances of a woman going through a difficult
process, director Berry doesn't need to stand on a soapbox with deep empathy.
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