Ale and Izzi dream and laugh together in the happiest moments, but Bahrani's close examination of their life in Willets Point in the yards of the chopshops never makes their work and hope out to be a drudgery or misery; he invites us to reconsider the meaning of good work, good dreams and what-should-be-enough by looking at lives poised more precariously on the boundary of safety and security. The naturalism of the mise en scene and the acting style are masterfully balanced by sophisticated cinematography and a rigorously cohesive aesthetic sensibility; the spiritual power of this film seems to eminate equally from the subtle narrative intensity and the visual insistence of beauty's stubborn persistence.
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