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The Visitor (2007)
Director: Tom McCarthy
Movie review
From Time Out New York
The road to white people’s salvation is paved with the misery of brown and black folks, or so we learn in writer-director Tom McCarthy’s sophomore feature. Not that this lesson hasn’t been taught before: We’ve seen it in Mississippi Burning (the civil-rights movement as experienced by two white FBI agents) and Blood Diamond (Leo DiCaprio’s rapacious gem smuggler redeemed as scores of Sierra Leoneans are slaughtered). Granted, The Visitor, which has immigration as its ostensible subject, is a softer, much less inflammatory film, but its mushy, apolitical humanism is just as insidious.
Continuing the “only connect” school of Amerindie filmmaking—shown to greater effect in McCarthy’s debut, the Sundance prizewinner The Station Agent (2003)—The Visitor follows a trio of misfits. Widowed, depressive Connecticut College economics professor Walter (Jenkins), forced by his superior to attend a conference at NYU, finds his city apartment inhabited by two illegal aliens: Syrian Tarek (Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Gurira). As in The Station Agent, the triangulation shifts to dyads, with Walter and Tarek bonding over drumming. The pockmarked prof is all thumbs when it comes to classical piano—the métier of his dead wife—but once he has a go on the djembe, he opens up, just as his Arab friend, arrested in the subway for no reason, is locked away in a detention center in Queens. Rather than being concerned with his own safety, his girlfriend or his worried mother, Mouna (Abbass), what’s of utmost importance to Tarek is his friend’s new hobby: “You should go back to the drum circle. Listen to the Fela CD—it will help you,” he tells Walter during a jail visit. As the comfortably middle-class protagonist shells out money for an ineffectual immigration lawyer for Tarek, spews at guards in a snit of impotent indignation and takes Mouna to a Broadway show, other characters are simply disappeared. But what does it matter? Walter is now a card-carrying citizen of the rhythm nation.
Author: Melissa Anderson
Time Out New York Issue 654: April 10 - 16, 2008
User reviews of this film
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- RAB said...
- Posted on Jul 01 2008 16:06 Not sure what film Melissa Anderson went to see, but this is a delightful, sensitive, and genuinely moving little piece. Life is messy, intentions are confusing, the right thing to do is always clouded. Guns and car chases are not the stuff of everyday human experiences, while grief, confusion, and irrationality are what we all know. As anyone who has read Sacks' latest book "Musicophilia" is aware, music is a more primitive language of emotion and connection. The drumming acts as that medium of communication across two cultures in a situation that is quite believable. Forget that awful review of Anderson and her condescending remark about "the rhythm nation." Go see it yourself.
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- Bob said...
- Posted on May 28 2008 07:45 Loved this movie which is all about people connecting and not about politics and mistreatment. The cast is superb with many magical interactions to experience and enjoy. Lighten up.
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- Ted said...
- Posted on May 22 2008 10:32 I almost didn't go to see this film based on this bad review, but I'm glad I did see it - it's a wonderful, intelligent film with great performances, beautfully framed, packed with powerful moments, gazes, glances. I feel bad that the TONY reviewer saw an entirely different film - and I feel bad that because of a bad review, some people might make the mistake that I almost made.
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- Dougal said...
- Posted on May 20 2008 21:11 A smart, tough, wonderfully understanding movie with a plot that works and actors who do the same. Richard Jenkins, late of "Six Feet Under," is a joy to watch; you can watch his face, his posture, his movements change as he comes out of the professorial shell he's locked himself into. A very American movie, in the best sense of the phrase.
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- Robert said...
- Posted on May 01 2008 21:59 This film doesn't try to be anymore than it is, and it's delightful.
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- jan said...
- Posted on Apr 25 2008 18:16 The Time Out critic's review was way off! This was a beautiful film about how someone can be lifted out of an amotional stupor by connecting with people who have so much more to be unhappy about, and yet they endure and connect with each other.
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- Bob said...
- Posted on Apr 21 2008 07:28 Saw at Atlanta film festival and disagree.
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- Lori said...
- Posted on Apr 09 2008 10:43 Disagree strongly. Saw in Sundance and loved film.
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Cast & crew
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Hiam Abbass, Marian Seldes full cast
Rated: PG-13
Duration: 103 mins
US Release: Apr 11 2008
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