The Visitor (2007)

The Visitor was shown in cinemas here a while ago but I forgot to go see it, even though my sister talked about it a few times. It really is a good movie.

The widowed main character, Walter, is what harsh managerialists would call "dead wood" - he teaches, but without enthusiasm. He is tired and has no interest in his job. Against his will, he is sent to New York to attend a conference. While entering his apartment (obviously, he has his own place) he notices he is not alone. Walter's landlord obviously has noticed that Walter does not visit the place very often and Tarek, an illegal immigrant from Syria, and his girlfriend Zainab, from Senegal, now live there. Walter is a stiff man. The initial encounter with the new inhabitants is excruciatingly embarrassing but he offers them to stay in the apartment. Walter gradually befriends Tarek, who is a drummer. Zainab is more suspicious. Tarek teaches Walter how to play. Walter slowly comes to life. One day, Tarek is arrested for a petty breaking of rules that no "American" would have been arrested for. As he is illegally in the country, this is a serious situation. Walter's colleague repeatedly asks him to come back to Connecticut, but somehow it is impossible for Walter to go back.

The scenes in this movies worked as snapshots: short, just hinting at the story that was unraveled. I found many scenes very powerful and the pace of the film was pleasantly slow. Especially the way scenes were cut was, in my opinion, quite unusual, as the director decided to focus on many silent, although very expressive, moments that revealed the character of the relationships. The character of Walter was quite successfully developed and the actor Richard Jenkins is very good, I think (I didn't even realize he's the guy playing Nathaniel Fisher SR!). The widower who initially had lots of problems with himself wasn't, I would say, a caricature (neither were Tarek & Zainab reduced to "Culture"). His "goodness" was not transformed into cheery heroism. He could've become "the good American" whose malaise was saved by "oriental energy" but if you ask me he didn't have that function of "conscience-prozac" and the film didn't fall into the latter trap either - even though some scenes were a little too smooth for their own good (Walter sitting in the park, happily pounding the drums - was a bit over the top because of the specific things the scene focused on). I think the film dealt with its major themes - chance and sudden friendship - in quite a beautiful way.

Clearly, The Visitor is a political story. The rules of immigration and deportation and the dealings of public authorities are depicted as cruel and legalistic. I'm not sure what American reviewers made of this. But could the movie have been "harder" on its viewers? I'm not sure, I'm not sure. It is obvious that the political theme is only one of many. And maybe there is something fishy about the way the focus of the film is clearly Walter. Not Tarek or Zainab. If I were to be hard on this movie, I would say that the topic of illegal immigration is simply fluff. But I'm not sure if I want to say that, either. I don't know what to think about this right know. Have I been tricked into something?

This was also a very different movie than The Station Agent that Thomas McCarthy directed a few years ago.