a review by Heather Craig
I loved The Station Agent. In fact I own The Station Agent. Suffice it to say that when its author, Thomas McCarthy, had another movie come out, I had to see it. Like The Station Agent, The Visitor, which McCarthy also directed, is peopled with lovable, quirky characters, and is as much a character study as a narrative. However, while a worthy film and eminently watchable, The Visitor simply doesn’t have the eccentric charm I associate with The Station Agent.
The Visitor is a star vehicle for Richard Jenkins, one of those actors that you recognize when you see him, but you don’t recall his name nor exactly where you saw him before. Actually, you’ve seen him all over the place, from Hannah and Her Sisters to Something About Mary and most recently in Burn After Reading. He is probably best known as Nathaniel Fisher, Sr. on the TV series Six Feet Under. In all of these productions, he does competent turns, contributing his bit but not stealing the focus from the main characters and their own angst or comedy. Now in a movie with him as the main character, we find him to be a sweet, relatable man, not particularly dynamic, but a man we may know in our own lives.
One problem I have with the movie is that in establishing Richard Jenkins’ character, Professor Walter Vale, as having a mundane, even boring existence, the film itself begins rather boring and mundane. Luckily about 15 minutes in to the film, Walter goes to an economics conference in New York City where he keeps an apartment. When he goes to the apartment after the first day of the conference, he finds Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira) living there. The young couple had been innocently paying a real estate scam artist and have no idea the apartment actually belonged to Walter. They have nowhere to go, and Walter spontaneously offers to share the apartment with them.
Tarek is originally from Syria, Zainab from Senegal, and the 2 barely scrape by. To Zainab’s discomfort and consternation, Tarek takes Walter under his wing, hanging out with him and taking him with him to gigs where Tarek makes money by playing the drums. Walter, a talentless but determined piano student, takes to the African beat of the drums and teacher Tarek is delighted. One key scene shows repressed Walter’s joy when Tarek convinces him to join a group of drummers in the park.
Soon after, the movie becomes very serious indeed. Due to a misunderstanding, Tarek is stopped by police, who take him in. Walter learns that Tarek, Zainab, and indeed most of their acquaintances, are illegal immigrants. Walter becomes Tarek’s lone visitor at the detention center. This is pretty grim stuff, but by now we care deeply about all three characters and desperately want a happy ending for all involved.
While highlighting the injustices perpetrated on illegal immigrants, particularly men from a certain part of the world, the film slows down again and a sense of dread mounts. And like real life, the movie has no quick fixes nor easy answers. Haaz Sleiman’s portrayal of the frightened optimist Tarek is particularly fine here. Without his ease in the part, it would be pretty difficult to believe the quickness with which two people so polemically different bond, yet the movie wouldn’t work at all without it.
The Station Agent wasn’t all sweetness and light either, but it did leave me more happy than sad. That wasn’t the case here. While that may be appropriate in a movie made to shine a spotlight on the inequities in the detention process, it doesn’t keep me from preferring the more uplifting film.
