FilmBlather.com

"A cave, filled with gems and gold."

When adventures happen to movie children, they typically wind up being wondrous journeys of self-discovery, as the kids vanquish their foes, overcome their obstacles, all while an upbeat orchestral score plays on in the background. The Italian thriller I'm Not Scared, though, is closer in tone to Steven Spielberg's amazing Empire of the Sun, as a young boy's fantasy rapidly turns into a nightmare, and ends with irreparable damage. Though the final image here is arguably more hopeful than the one in Empire, I would argue that they are substantively the same.

The opening shots of I'm Not Scared suggest another of those movies where people spend two hours frolicking in the fields and meadows of an uncertain picturesque European locale -- Tea With Mussolini, anyone? Captain Corelli's Mandolin? But the swooping camera, running kids, and Badalamenti-esque musical score inspire vague feelings of dread, not whimsy. The children we see aren't the cheerful, joyous, devil-may-care rompers one might expect; there is a meanness to their innocence, and when they race to an abandoned house in the South Italian countryside, the last one there has to do more than be a rotten egg.

The loss of innocence is clearly a theme that runs through I'm Not Scared, but hardly in the conventional sense. For Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano), the 10 year-old boy who discovers a dark secret in a hole in the ground a few miles from his home, the result isn't just disillusionment and the knowledge that not everyone out there can be trusted equally (though there is indeed a fair amount of both), but the discovery of the responsibility inherent in being alive and a good person. The smile that fills the screen before the final fade to black isn't a vapid attempt at an uplifting ending, but the protagonist's realization of what he has just done and how right it was.

The betrayals and misdeeds aren't just courtesy of the film's adult population, as demonstrated by Michele's friend, who sells him out for a chance to sit at the steering wheel of a car. This isn't an ageist movie -- evil is found in the old and the young alike. Or perhaps more specific, the temptation to do wrong doesn't discriminate, and Michele has to navigate some seriously muddy waters before finally realizing what he has to do.

Directed by Gabriele Salvatores, whose Mediterraneo won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1992, I'm Not Scared is an accomplished piece of filmmaking, grabbing the audience both emotionally and viscerally. When I saw the film for the first time at the Telluride Film Festival, my bag of popcorn wound up all over my neighbor -- you'll know the moment when you see it. The second time I didn't have popcorn, but I still jumped a couple of feet into the air. Not bad for a movie with no intentions of invading the horror genre.

The film is full of virtuoso tracking shots and startlingly beautiful compositions (equally so in the conventionally pretty nature shots and in the darker, scarier scenes). Salvatores doesn't linger pointlessly on flora -- Oh look! A tree! -- and as the plot fairly rockets towards its stunning conclusion, the editing and camerawork become more and more characteristic of a thriller. By the time we reach the end, a simple flash to white is probably the most startling thing that can happen.

Loss of innocence? Yeah, maybe. But there's so much more at play here that it seems absurdly reductionist to stick I'm Not Scared with such a clichéd label. On his journey, Michele discovers nothing less than the meaning of life, and it is heartbreaking in its simplicity.