the visitor; the station agent

I love film and I love writing, but let me confess that unfortunately, I've been a bit slow to update this blog with some quick reviews. I tend to see a lot of movies and combined with the busy-ness of this past school year, I didn't get to do as much writing as I wanted to, but I always feel obligated to share about some of the films I've enjoyed...



The Visitor

Though I heard a small bit about this film, it wasn't until the birthday of my friend Yohei that I got see it - a large group of us caught at the Harvard Exit up on Seattle's Capital Hill about a month ago in May.

On the surface, The Visitor seems to be a simple story about how the power of music can transcend the differences of people. The protagonist of the movie is an old New England college economics professor named Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) and our introduction to him is the awkward spectacle of his inept attempts at playing the piano. We find out that Walter lives alone, stuck in a rut that is equally boring as it mundane.

The story doesn't pick up until he travels to New York for a scholarly conference, where he stumbles upon two people living in his apartment in NY - a Syrian-Palestinian musician named Tarek Khalil (well acted by Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira). Apparently, the two had been tricked by a friend of theirs into believing they could cheaply rent the fully furnished apartment. Walter initially kicks them out, but after figuring out that they have no other place to go, he invites them to stay with him.

Tarek, moved by Walter's kindness, wants badly to compensate Walter in some way - so he begins to teach Walter how to drum and play djembe. The two men form an unlikely friendship that the movie developes naturally. Tarek's outgoing, optimistic nature contrasts again Walter's guarded and reticient personality. Walter is an enthusiastic drummer, and he also begins to form friendships with Zainab, and later, Tarek's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass). He also learns that both Zainab and Tarek are illegal immigrants, with Tarek sharing how he grew up as a Palestinian refugee in Syria before coming to the US.

From here on out, director Thomas McCarthy could have taken the easy way out and made a movie simply about music, but the plot of The Visitor takes a more interesting and complicated turn. Without spoiling the story, tragedy befalls one of the main characters and Walter is left to figure out how to solve things. The movie wisely avoids the tired Hollywood cliche of "the white guy saves everybody", and we see visibly how Walter, with all of the privilege and financial power of his place in his society, struggles to comprehend how different his world is from the world of Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna. In a way, it is Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna who help Walter deal with what has happened, even as Walter struggles to make things right.

So if you have the chance... go see The Visitor.

The Visitor Official Site

.:.

The Station Agent

After watching The Visitor, the wifey encouraged me to watch The Station Agent, another movie by Thomas McCarthy. McCarthy wrote the film and directed it as his directorial debut.

Having seen The Visitor previously, the first thing that I noticed was how stylistically and thematically similar the The Station Agent was. McCarthy's protagonist in The Station Agent is a 30-something introverted man named Fin (Peter Dinklage) whose most visible charistic (besides his well-kept suit and chain smoking) is his dwarfism. Fin works and lives at a small model train shop, but after a series of events, finds himself the owner and resident of an abandoned train station out in rural Newfoundland.

Like Walter, Fin lives a solitary, stoic lifestyle. Understandably, Fin shuns contact with other people and prefers to venture out only in the exploration of his hobby - following train tracks, watching trains, reading books about trains, fixing up the station, etc. From the first day that Fin arrives at the station however, he meets two people - Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a friendly man whose Cuban American family owns a snack truck; and Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), an awkward and clumsy artist who lives alone.

At the insistence of Joe (whose job running the snack truck clearly bores him), the three begin to become friends. The theme of friendships across differences of ethnicity, age, and social circumstances seems to be a strong interest of McCarthy's and his film does an excellent job exploring the relationships between the characters. There's humorous scenes of Joe trying to learn Fin's train hobby as well as Olivia's awkward attempts to apologize to Fin after several driving mishaps.

What was particularly poignant to me was the portrayal Fin's handling of his status as an outsider - someone whose physical and personality traits mark him as "the other". In circumstances that echo the ugliness of racism, Fin's status as a "dwarf" in the rural town leads to mockery, insults, and general awkward situations where Fin is treated as a freak to be stared or pitied. The effect of it all clearly wears on Fin's character, and anybody who's ever been picked on because of their differences will sympathize with his hurt, his frustration, and his anger. Ultimately, it is these negative emotions that begin to tear at not only Fin, but his friendships with Joe and Olivia as well.

I won't give away the plot except to say that yes, The Station Agent is another film worth watching. It's the perfect companion film to either a pre- or post-viewing of The Visitor.

The Station Agent Official Site