The Visitor (2008)

There may be, over the summer, people who ask about The Visitor at parties. These people will ask if I’ve seen it, and I’ll say I have, and I’ll voice some hesitance about the picture. These people may respond with a slightly deflated look that may, temporarily, spiritually reduce my height by a few feet. (It’s happened before.) The Visitor is a modest human story that currently populates a few theatres amidst countless stories of monsters destroying cities. The monster pictures generally teach us, and seek to teach us, nothing. The human stories normally have a lesson to impart or at least work out. About half-way through The Visitor, just as the picture is really settling into its social services groove, I thought, as I tend to during these sorts of pictures-Why can’t a human story seek to teach us nothing? Few films are truly profound; and the uncluttered exploration of day to day existence is a truer, more reliable, port to profundity anyway. The little pictures, in their way, tend to suffer from the same preoccupation as the summer monster movies: more, more, more.

The Visitor is a blend of two increasingly shopworn subgenres; both stemming from a certain privileged-white-man’s guilt: the why can’t I, for once, be the good guy to a race besides my own (?) factor. When, and how, can I shed this inherited guilt and injustice (like a snake’s skin) and be copasetic with the rest of the world? Without any true change or sacrifice, of course, that would be yucky and kinda hard. (These films always go to great pains to establish that the white guy in question’s pocketbook won’t suffer, whatever may happen, his quasi-retirement will remain unperturbed.) The first genre is the genre that Paul Haggis has recently trademarked: the several-races-thrown-into-the-same-mix-over-a-common-glaring-injustice-watch-how-everyone-learns-to-eat-their-own-porridge film. The second is the lonely-bitter-old-man-reaches-out-again film.

I have no use for the Paul Haggis type picture, and we’ve discussed that in the past, so let’s push that to the corner and leave it alone, I’m sure there’s many other posts that are happy to get into yet it again. I’m a sucker for the lonely-old-man film: it’s a set of clichés that rarely fails to stir me. The notion of crossing normally unfathomable gaps such as age or race to arrive at something resembling grace is just too irresistible. Alexander Payne made a hell of a run with it a few years ago with About Schmidt (it was a canny reworking-he avoided many of the pitfalls by keeping the youthful rejuvenator of emotions off-screen). Sofia Coppola made a fine film of it with Lost in Translation-which was a crossbreed too, a blend of the old man film and the Brief Encounter abbreviated love picture. Andrew Wagner botched the genre, and wasted a lovely Frank Langella performance, with the bullying Starting Out in the Evening.

The Visitor is, thankfully, much better than Starting Out in the Evening or the Paul Haggis type movies. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent) is also an actor, and he shows a courtesy for his characters that wrings a certain quality out of even the most unconvincing scenes. The opening act-in which we primarily follow Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) as he goes about a life that strives for dignity at the expense of everything else-is actually rather beautiful in a typically indie dialed down way. Make no mistake, McCarthy is manipulative, and his touch, really, isn’t much lighter than that of a director of big-budget tearjerkers. McCarthy plays that card that many directors self-conscious of the clichés of the life affirming picture play: they underplay. Every scene is turned half a notch lower than you’d expect; to strive for greater “reality”, to disguise that most of the scenes have a very un-spontaneous, “worked out” feel. McCarthy is checking his list like anyone else: dead wife; unfinished, useless job; fear of intimacy, unbelievably open new friends, etc.

But McCarthy does something early on that moved me, and had me rooting for his picture. Vale has a conference to attend in New York City (he lives in Connecticut) and he returns to his apartment that he’s owned for many years without actually occupying. Vale discovers two squatters: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira), who have been living in his apartment, based on a misunderstanding (maybe), for a few months. It quickly becomes evident that they have nowhere to go. The couple apologizes and leaves. Walter considers, and follows them down to the street corner. He asks if they have a place to stay, they assure him, half-heartedly, that they do. Walter looks them over and considers again…and the picture cuts directly to the couple returning to stay in apartment. McCarthy omits Walter’s inviting the couple to return. This may have been an accident, for all we know that bit of film was damaged, but this simple device exudes an incredible generosity. Walter, a shy, painfully self-conscious man, wouldn’t want to be seen asking these two people to stay. And so McCarthy spares him that.

I wish that McCarthy had been satisfied with his story of a man bonding with a family of illegal immigrants and learning to play their drums (a reaction to his deceased wife, which is also handled gracefully). I wish that McCarthy had been satisfied with his story of Walter falling for Tarek’s mother (Hiam Abbass). But no, the picture has to ensure that we understand it’s a reaction to 9/11, and the subsequent immigration paranoia that has followed. We already knew that, and we already understood the stakes, but McCarthy has to have his hero throw a tantrum at an officer just to further ensure that we miss nothing. That Walter would never do that, of course, means nothing. The thesis governs all, I’m afraid.

I still don’t want to try too hard to dissuade you from seeing The Visitor though. Jenkins is wonderful, full, and it’s a charge to see a great character actor treated with such reverence. Jenkins imbues The Visitor with subtlety and observation: watch how he leans up from the drum as if being caught mid-masturbation, watch how he buttons and unbuttons his jacket when threatened, like an adult safety blanket. Watch his tentative chemistry with Abbass, who is also beautiful and moving. Watch how they lie in bed together, their fingers clasping in a specific, true, earned, way. These moments are the true civics lesson, the unifier, perhaps our only probable hope. The literal civics lesson is just a distraction.

★★½

Posted on June 13th, 2008 in Reviews, Drama, 2008 |

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