The Visitor

Plot synopsis:
Widowed Connecticut College economics professor Walter Vale lives a fairly solitary existence. He fills his hours by taking piano lessons in an effort to emulate his late wife, a classical concert pianist, and works on a new book, although his efforts at both are not producing encouraging results. When he is asked to present a paper at a conference at New York University, he hesitates to comply, given he is only the nominal co-author and never even read the paper. Charles, his department head, persists, and Walter is forced to attend.When he arrives at the apartment he maintains in Manhattan, he is startled to discover a young couple living there, having rented it from a swindler who claimed it was his. They are Tarek, a Palestinian-Syrian[5] djembe player, and Zainab, a Senegalese designer of ethnic jewelry. He later discovers both are illegal immigrants. Although they have no place to go, they hastily pack and leave, but Walter follows them and persuades them to return. Over the next few days, a friendship slowly develops. Tarek teaches Walter to play the drum, and the two men join a group of others at an impromptu drum circle in Central Park.En route home, Tarek is mistakenly charged with subway turnstile jumping, arrested for failing to pay his fare, and taken to a detention center for illegal immigrants in Queens. In order to prevent Tarek's deportation, Walter hires an immigration lawyer. Feeling uncomfortable about remaining in the apartment with Walter, Zainab moves out to live with relatives in the Bronx.Tarek's mother, Mouna, unexpectedly arrives from her home in Michigan when she is unable to contact her son. Also in the States illegally, she accepts Walter's offer to stay in the apartment, and the two develop a friendship. Walter confesses his life is unfullfilling: He dislikes the single course he has taught for twenty years, and the book he allegedly is writing is nowhere near completion. It is revealed that Mouna's journalist husband died following a lengthy politically-motivated imprisonment in Syria, and she is concerned about her son's future prospects if he is deported. The two begin to share a simple domestic existence, with Mouna preparing meals and Walter treating her to The Phantom of the Opera when she mentions her love for the original cast recording Tarek sent her as a gift.Without warning, Tarek is summarily deported to Syria, and Mouna decides to follow him. Alone once again, Walter plays his drum on a subway platform, as Tarek once told him he himself would like to do some time.

Tags: psychedelic, romantic

Review:
Made by Tom McCarthy whose prior film, "The Station Agent," was an imperfect, character-absorbed drama.The star of this movie is an actor (Richard Jenkins) whom you'll recognize from his numerous roles as minor-characters, most notably the dead-patriarch in "Six Feet Under." All of the other actors are completely unknown, but notably talented.The appeal of this film is its story.
As he proved with his first film as a director and screenwriter, 2003's "The Station Agent", Thomas McCarthy knows how to convey the fine line between solitude and loneliness in his characters' lives with an emotional preciseness that doesn't call attention to itself.
With his constant look of resignation on the verge of revelation, Jenkins gives a wondrously poignant, often dryly funny performance that deepens as the story evolves.Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira are terrifically winning as Tarek and Zainab, and they make their bonding with Walter more than credible.
Walter (Richard Jenkins, "Six Feet Under") is a widowed college professor that meets two illegal immigrants - a Senegalese woman (Danai Gurira) and a Syrian man, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) -, living in his apartment in NYC.
After the initial discomfort of the situation, Walter decides to help the young couple and an unlikely friendship is born."The Visitor" deals with human relationships and discusses post-9/11 America socio-political issues (the plight of immigrants, xenophobia, etc.) with no hidden agendas.
McCarthy has proved himself as a sensitive director/writer, and he extracts a magnificent performance from Richard Jenkins, a character actor who gets his first leading role at the age of 60.
Walter finds himself in New York on business and runs into two illegal immigrants, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira who were tricked into renting his apartment.
Soon Walter is joined by Tarek's mother Mouna.The Visitor is a wonderful piece that brings together some of the best performances I have seen this year.
The Visitor, instead of political aspirations, merely seeks to show us that anyone can change your life and that change is all around us and is indeed a good thing.In the end, Thomas McCarthy succeeds in bringing capturing the humor, tragedy, and change of the human experience in his new film.
Brought to life by incredibly stirring performances, particularly Richard Jenkins, the Visitor is the most emotionally powerful film to light up the big screen in a while..
The events opens up the main character as well as the audience's awareness of what is happening all around us in everyday life, of which few are aware and most of us prefer not to know about.What makes the movie what it is is the fact that it is not necessarily designed to make a specific point or manipulate the emotions of the audience or to provide an answer or ending to make folks feel one way or another.
Remarkably sincere and touching, the unimaginable events feel natural.Awkward Connecticut economics professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) has essentially checked out from his job, his personality and his life.
Tarek and Zainab teach Walter to live again, to come out of his shell and remind him how unfair life can be.Writer and director Thomas McCarthy wrote all of the characters in The Visitor with almost contradictory personality attributes which gives them each a complex humanity.McCarthy wrote Walter Vale painfully dull and bumbling but it was Richard Jenkins who also makes Walter charming and heart breaking.
The Visitor is an artsy movie but Tom McArdle checked out completely in a few of the scenes.Slow bits aside, The Visitor is a rewarding film with rich characters, beautiful acting and complexities that might make those people who are quick to tears, cry..
I felt that these quality performances go a long way towards forgiving the unlikely set of circumstances (and responses) that brought and kept the three characters together.I thought the scenes where Walter learns to play the djembe were beautifully played; Walter's awkward but curious initiation to drumming and the (unexpected) expression of pure joy on his face while playing added believable depth to an otherwise restrained and austere performance.Walter's exposure to the djembe perhaps underpins the films well-intentioned message  that our lives are enriched by living side-by side with other cultures.
The story no longer had a life of it's own  and seemed to involve reaching a predetermined conclusion through any route possible.The character of Tarek's (caring / strong / dignified) mother, fell short of the high-expectations that I'd built-up during the first half of the film.
The subsequent relationship that develops between Walter and Mouna seemed gratuitous and left too many questions unanswered.After watching this and Tom McCarthy's first film (The Station Agent), it's clear to me that McCarthy is an accomplished director / writer - who perhaps excels at directing character-based stories.
The Visitor is an ideal movie for those believe in the standard stereotypes "white middle aged Americans are bad", "Arabs and Africans are good".The film is slow, the acting too stiff, the dialogs silly and superfluous.
Mr. McCarthy's film seems to be working at several levels, a main one being the character development of Walter Vale, and another the effects of blind bureaucracy upon the human spirit.It was interesting to see Vale's callous attitude toward one of his students early on when the lad was late turning in a class paper.
In Connecticut, the widower and lonely Professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) has a boring life teaching for one class only in the college and trying to learn how to play piano despite not having the necessary musical talent.
Walter hires a lawyer to defend Tarek and out of the blue, Tarek's mother Mouna Khalil (Hiam Abbass) appears in Walter's apartment coming from Michigan; he invites her to stay in Tarek's room and while trying to release Tarek, Walter and Mouna get close to each other and he finds a reason to live an exciting life again."The Visitor" is a touching and realistic tale of friendship and self- discovery in a world of intolerance.
The always awesome Richard Jenkins, who plays a middle-aged intellectual that lives a senseless life after the death of his wife that finds a reason to live with music, the elegant Hiam Abbass that helps Walter to find the meaning of life together with her son, performed by the unknown Haaz Sleiman have an amazing work.
Thomas McCarthy's two films, The Station Agent and The Visitor, are both concerned with a person not in his element of social space, of being disconnected from other people and not really based on him wanting it on himself, but somehow finds people to connect with without any force and gets wrapped up in their lives because he is, basically, a good person.
Peter Dinklage played the former title character, and now we have Richard Jenkins (a veteran character we all know and admire but never really peg who he is most of the time he shows up) as a middle aged college professor who's wife has passed on and doesn't have any passion for teaching or writing his next book.He takes begrudgingly a task to give a speech on a paper he only co-wrote in name in New York City, and finds in his old apartment a couple (Syrian and African played by Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira) who have been living there for a couple of months.
Then something happens, tragically, which changes everything, but it's not what you might think at first.It would appear that the Visitor is a film about the underrated horror of the problems of being an illegal in America, and the processes of the government basically not giving a damn about most of the people, and most of whom haven't done a thing.
This film works on so many different levels: being a strong social critique, love story, an account of both alienation with members of one's own society and bondage with members of a seemingly alien culture, dehumanization/re-humanization at work, a celebration of our basic humanity (and of a djembe drum).As for the Richard Jenkins character in the film, a stunning performance from an actor whom you have seen so many times in supporting roles, but never in a lead one.
...into thinking that this movie is a 100% realistic slice of life.The characters of the boy, girl and boy's mum seem pretty one-sided and their innocence does not convince me.People never have that degree of purity in real life,and I've yet to see immigrants that resemble these.I'm not saying that some points about those characters were not spot-on,but they are presented in a ludicrously positive light.The boy is an Arab that doesn't care about politics,is a good musician,has a Black girlfriend,loves the US culture and lifestyle,and...this a bit too much positivity for me.The girl is an angel and her relationship with the boy is strong and tight, it crosses all cultural boundaries...okkkk, too much positivity again.The mum is such a open-minded person,she loves the US culture and lifestyle too,she's an Arab woman that does not reject her Arabic background,and yet,like her son,she doesn't seem to be rooted in it at all,except in clichés like cooking and music...okkkkk,too much positivity again.Now, I suspect why the movie is so one-sided...it's probably because it wanted to focus on humanity of people vs.
Hiam Abbass' appearance as Mouna Khalil, Tarek's fretting Mum and potential love interest for Vale, gives the narrative added oomph, and adds gravitas to the less-than-upbeat ending.The film judges our times, and finds them guilty.
Without revealing much, Tarek is arrested and it's time to Walter to find ways to help his new friend who fears the possibility of being deported since he and his wife are illegal in the country.
But, his excuses don't work and he reluctantly goes to the conference.When he enters his own New York City apartment, he finds two foreigners living there: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), an Arab from Syria, and his girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira),a black African from Senegal.
Walter gets him a lawyer and Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass) leaves Michigan to be close to her son.Jenkins is quiet but has great humanity.
The film also goes a long way to showing that not all foreign people are terrorists and that some are actually decent human beings and that because they are foreign, lots of assumptions and misunderstandings begin to ensue.Thomas McCarthy's film is about a middle-aged man named Walter Vale who has given up on life after his wife passed away.
It's even harder if your an immigrant from Syria after 9/11, due to the prejudice security system portrayed in "The Visitor." Richard Jenkins gives a quietly moving performance as Walter, a lonely college professor who finds a married immigrant couple living in his apartment.
I also liked this movie because of the interpretation of Richard Jenkins who plays as Walter the man who wants to attend a conference and I also liked the interpretation of Haaz Sleiman who plays as Tarek one person of the couple who moved in the apartment of Walter.Finally I have to say that "The Visitor" is a really nice movie and I believe that it had to give us many things about the relationships between people and how these affect the personalities of them..
As the situation for Tarek becomes increasingly hopeless, Walter and Mouna form a tender friendship and romance beckons but so does reality.'The Visitor' is a simple film that beautifully observes the tensions and difficulties among the immigrant population of America in the post 9/11 world.
At its heart, this is a very powerful story about needy people who find each other and support each other and become like family to each other.Richard Jenkins was superb as Walter Vale, a professor at a Connecticut college who gets sent to New York City to present a paper that he hadn't even written.
For the first while, this really doesn't seem to be going anywhere or establishing itself with any real purpose, but then, going to New York, Walter arrives at the apartment he still rents in the city, only to find that an illegal immigrant couple (Tarek and Zainab) have taken up residence there.
When Mouna (played very well by Hiam Abbass) shows up in New York (she's also an illegal immigrant living in Michigan) she and Walter begin a friendship that teeters on the edge of a romance that lasts until she has to return to Syria to help Tarek once he's deported despite Walter's efforts to help.
The Visitor is never dull, consistent in its tone and a thoroughly engaging feature.The Oscar nominated Richard Jenkins plays a Connecticut based university lecturer named Walter Vale, a man whom we observe sits idly in a cafeteria all by himself; his wife already passed away and a burrowing attempt to become reconnected with something, in the form of piano tuition, eventually trailing off following a spate of unsuccessful lessons.
Where Vale was unable to properly connect with the musical item of the piano via his lessons, a musical instrument you'd say is perhaps more associated with The West, he comes to love the drum-like instrument Tarek introduces him to and of which we can see him playing on the film's poster; where once in the past, everything seemed to blur into itself, the project Vale invests his time in that is linked to Tarek's later plight allows him to feel involved and engaged in something unlike before; and where his life was lonely and isolation was the order of most days, the film nicely breaks off its core study for a brief tale of connectivity between Vale and Tarek's mother, Mouna (Abbass), whom comes to visit and represents a friendship which broadens out to further Muslim characters after having had all this prior interaction to run on.Tarek and Zainab are fleshed out, humanised immigrant Muslims living in America, ultimately subscribing to an American Dream existence of sorts, but allowed to appear flawed and granted problems and issues that the film pays attention to.
At nine minutes into the film, the script's inciting incident turns Dr. Vale's life upside down.A character study of a conservative, staid, older man, "The Visitor" is a technically well made movie, with an underlying message that is politically cogent.
Then, while in New York for a conference, Walter (that's his name) goes to his supposedly empty apartment and finds out it's occupied by a Syrian immigrant, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira).
Superbly acted by Richard Jenkins, an actor who gets a well deserved chance for a lead role, our character has chance to meet real life and real people when he finds a couple of illegal immigrants from the three world installed in his NYC Village apartment.
This meeting will not only give him a chance to regain interest in life and human feelings, but will also provide the opportunity of him visiting his own country and understanding the behavior of the system towards the less privileged folks who try to enter the gates of the new promised land.'The Visitor' is certainly one of the best films I have seen lately about immigration, but it is more.
This film starts with the routine life of a tenured economics professor Walter Vale, with comfort, respect and security.....and a mind numbing emptiness that was only alluded to by the understated brilliance Richard Jenkins.As he opens the door of his Manhattan apartment, another gift by the city that kept the rent low enough for him to leave empty for the few times he used it, he was surprised to find it had been illegally rented to a couple, immigrants born into a world of fear and hunger.The film makers chose to create the scene of first contact with minimal conversation, simply allowing the characters to behave as they might have, the interlopers with fear, and the Professor with mixed emotions.
But more importantly, the film is populated by a number of intensely likable characters.Professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a man who, since the death of his wife, is living a meaningless existence with only routine to keep him going.
Especially having been blown away by McCarthy's "The Station Agent" a few years ago.The movie's theme works on many levels: a distant and lonely professor - perfect casting in Richard Jenkins of "Six Feet Under" fame - slowly comes to life when he comes into contact with a supporting cast of a quality and talent matching his own: Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman and Danai Jekesai Gurira.Walter Vale (Jenkins) is a widower who teaches economics at a Connecticut university and lives alone in a large Connecticut house.
Mouna,Tarek's mother (Abbass), arrives from Michigan and the slow love that develops between her and Walter is one of the best and most restrained portrayal of love I have ever seen on film.The movie serves to illustrate the post-9/11 immigration paranoia that exists in the US today, while at the same time showing how a previously detached and emotionless human in a materially comfortable existence can open up to love and friendship and re-ignite a slumbering lust for life.McCarthy wields a gentle but firm hand on the film and extracts incredible performances from all concerned.
That's why he found hope to change his life on a couple of Africans who are living by mistake in his new york's home.After knowing Tarek, Walter, feels motivated about learning to drum.
He's a college professor named Walter Jenkins who lives in Connecticut and who has traveled to New York to attend a conference, but when he keys into the apartment that he keeps in the city, which he hasn't visited in a long time, he finds two people living in it who turn out to be illegal immigrants from Senegal.
This is a man who has suffered the loss of his wife and is searching for something to fill that void.The development of the friendship between Walter and the two people living in his apartment, who are Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira), is uniquely presented and one of the best parts of the film.