Susan Granger’s review of “The Visitor” (Overture Films)
Writer/director Tom McCarthy follows up his debut feature, “The Station Agent,” with this sophisticated, compelling drama.
Widower Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a disillusioned 62 year-old Connecticut College economics professor suffering from ennui; he’s been teaching the same course for years and no longer has any interest in his students or his writing. Yet when he’s sent to New York to deliver a paper at a conference, Walter’s stunned to discover that a young couple has moved into his seldom-used apartment in Manhattan. Victims of a real estate scam, Terek (Haaz Sleiman), an illegal immigrant from Syria, and Zaibab (Danai Gurira), his Senagalese girlfriend, have no where else to go. In an uncharacteristic act of compassion, Walter allows them to stay in the extra bedroom.
Aware of his host’s love of music and touched by his generosity, Tarek begins teaching Walter how to play the African drum. Gradually, through the vitality of percussive rhythm, a friendship forms – one than transcends differences in age, culture and temperament. But then Tarek is stopped by police in the subway, arrested as an undocumented alien and held in Queens for deportation. Suddenly, Walter’s listless life takes on new meaning as he becomes a lifeline for Tarek, hiring a lawyer and offering comfort to Tarek’s mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), who arrives from Detroit.
The title refers not only to imprisoned Tarek but also to detached Walter, whose consciousness is changed by a chance encounter. Devoted to understated dialogue and restrained gestures, Tom McCarthy’s story unfolds with subtle grace, as Richard Jenkins (the ghostly patriarch in “Six Feet Under”) captures the every nuance of a man rediscovering his humanity. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Visitor” is a timely, eloquent 9, a quintessential post-9/11 story.
