The Visitor Review
by Jerry Saravia (Faust668 AT msn DOT com)October 20th, 2009
THE VISITOR (2007)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Four stars
Richard Jenkins is one of those character actors who appears and spices things up, and does it with a sly wink, an eyebrow lift or a chuckle to get his point across, usually followed by a nonplussed, deadpan look. He has appeared in "Wolf," "Flirting With Disaster," "Burn After Reading," amongst many other films. "The Visitor" is undeniable proof that this actor deserves more leading roles, especially in a film that is at once as profound and moving as anything you are likely to see. I make that latter statement often but this film really strikes a chord.
Jenkins plays Walter, an unhappy global economics professor living in Connecticut. He is so unhappy that he can't play the piano despite getting piano lessons (his late wife was a piano player). He tries to connect to something but he can't. He hasn't written a book in ages and is hesitant to attend a New York conference on a book he barely co- authored. Walter hesitantly goes to New York City and finds his apartment there is occupied by strangers, namely Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira). Tarek is an enthusiastic Syrian drum player and Zainab is an African woman who sells handmade and handcrafted jewelry. Both Tarek and Zainab are illegal immigrants and, in a lesser film, Walter might have called the INS and had them deported just before learning the errors of his ways and becoming a changed man. Walter does change but in ways that are shown with subtlety and nuance, not outright naked emotions like crying crocodile tears or screaming at the top of his lungs. Walter lets Tareq and Zainab stay in his two-bedroom apartment, allows Tarek to practice the drums in his underwear, and in short allows these people to occupy his apartment so that he can feel attached to someone again.
Through the course of "The Visitor," Walter learns to play the drums (a way of replacing his passionless piano playing and his obscure past) and begins the first few steps to express whatever he feels that he has been hiding from. He also meets, through an unusual set of circumstances, Tarek's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), whom he takes to the opera to see The Phantom of the Opera, and somehow relates and connects to her. Even Zainab warms up to Walter over time. Some reviewers have given away the second half of the film but it would be a disservice to reveal it here simply because it is not half as important as seeing the small nuances of change occuring in Walter.
"The Visitor" is briskly and economically directed by Thomas McCarthy, who had a wonderful debut with the equally effective "The Station Agent." In many ways, "The Visitor" resembles "The Station Agent" in its overall structure of how a person comes out of nowhere and makes a difference in people's lives by listening to and appreciating them. In "Station Agent," it was Peter Dinklage as a retail worker at a toy train shop who inherited a small train station and met two different characters, a coffee wagon owner and a divorced woman. The tone is also the same in "The Visitor" and the movie's sense of quiet invokes not despair but a sense of hope since it strongly builds its intimacy with the characters.
If "The Visitor" might seem like another tale of a middle-class white man who gets his groove back, it is only on the surface. Jenkins brings something more full-bodied and all-encompassing to Walter - he shows that the man has a heart but it takes a while to warm it up. Jenkins plays Walter as a detached man but not a cold or unfeeling detached man, rather someone who is doing what he can to help others in need. The implication seems to be that Walter is trying not to be sulky and is willing to move past his wife's death. His body language and gestures say much more than any emoting. One of the best scenes in the film is a small one to savor. It involves a dinner between Mouna and Walter and Mouna asks him about the process of writing. He responds rather harshly in tone by telling her that the writing process can't be explained to someone who isn't a writer. After making the comment, he apologizes. Small, effective, simple. That sums up "The Visitor."
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