REVIEW: The Visitor (A-)

Background: Actor Tom McCarthy's first film as a writer and director, The Station Agent, was a critical darling in 2003 and truly one of the most original American films to come along in the last 10 years. His second film, The Visitor, explores more conventional terrain albeit with mostly unfamiliar faces. You know Richard Jenkins as "that guy" from maybe 20 movies over the last two decades, and he was most recently in The Kingdom. Co-starring are Hiam Abbass (The Nativity Story, Munich) and relative newcomers Haaz Sleiman and Danai Jekesai Gurira. A piece of trivia: McCarthy developed the theme for The Visitor when he was presenting The Station Agent on a cultural exchange program in Beirut.

Synopsis : Walter Vale (Jenkins) is a widowed economics professor at a community college in Connecticut who finds joy in little in his life besides a glass of Cabernet. Tired of his teaching duties and stuck in a creative rut, he can hardly even motivate himself to go through the motions of his job, let alone actually do any work. When he's sent to present a paper at a conference at NYU, he's given a new lease on life. Upon discovering an undocumented immigrant couple living in his vacant NYC apartment, he finds himself oddly attached to them. Tarek (Sleiman), a Syrian, plays the djembe at local jazz clubs. His Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Gurira), makes and sells jewelry at an outdoor market. Walter is sympathetic to their plight and becomes somewhat of a father figure to them over the next 10 days. He watches Tarik play the djembe with equal parts envy and childlike awe; the drumming releases some innate emotion that he can't otherwise express, and he's soon drumming with Tarik at every opportunity. You can sense the third act of the film coming, but it's not simply Tarik's mistaken arrest and detainment. His mother, Mouna (Abbass), soon arrives from Michigan, vowing to remain there until he is released, despite the fact that neither she nor Zainab can visit him due to their legal status. Walter, in the meantime, has found his life's new calling in the mission to free Tarik before he is deported. His motive to help is genuine, but it's no doubt aided by his budding romance with Mouna. There aren't a lot of places the story can go from here, so I'll stop...

I Loved:
+ The drumming. As a former percussionist myself, I couldn't help my legs from going along with it.
+ Richard Jenkins, who almost certainly has his breakthrough performance here - 30 years into his career.

I Liked:
+ Danai Jekesai Gurira, who brought the film to another level with her excellent performance as Zainab. I am going insane trying to place her from another movie, but this is her first film credit. Maybe I actually know her? She graduated from Macalester College here in St. Paul. It's really early, but if her name came up in the Oscar buzz at year's end, it wouldn't bother me.
+ The somewhat abrupt ending. Initially I was irritated, but I soon accepted the fact that sometimes life just happens that way.

I Disliked:
- Tarek. He was a likable guy, but almost too much so. I wouldn't go so far as to call it manipulative on McCarthy's part, but it's pretty easy to elicit sympathy for a character who's perfect in every imaginable way.

I Hated:
- Nothing.

Grade:
Writing - 9
Acting - 10
Production - 8
Emotional Impact - 9
Music - 5
Significance - 5

Total: 46/50 = 92% = A-

Last Word: With only two films to his credit as a writer/director, Tom McCarthy has demonstrated an incredible ability to put square pegs into round holes. His characters are completely mismatched, but he creates incredibly intimate connections between them. While The Visitor doesn't necessarily achieve the grand vision McCarthy may have had for it as a referendum on America's treatment of immigrants, it still works splendidly as a glimpse into one man's rediscovery of his life. Richard Jenkins delivers a painfully honest performance, and early calls for an Oscar nomination are justified. His Walter Vale carries so much emotion that a simple smile appears to unload years of grief, yet Jenkins never exaggerates (like Haaz Sleiman) or missteps, which is vital since the film almost entirely depends on him. The film lags just a bit after Tarek's detainment, but the arrival of Mouna - while not seeming entirely natural - adds a romantic, comforting aspect to what would otherwise be a really depressing story. I think I prefer the quirks and the characters of The Station Agent, but I admire Tom McCarthy's ambition with The Visitor and I'm confident in calling him, at only 39 years old, one of the most promising American filmmakers of his generation.