The Visitor
Thomas McCarthy | USA | 2008
104 min
Thomas McCarthy writes good stories about misunderstood outsiders. His 2003 film The Station Agent personified what it meant to be a stranger in your own life — made all the more striking because the protagonist was a dwarf still adjusting to life as a person who didn’t fit into normal society. The Visitor carves its setting from a similar situation. It is about a quite, timid, recently widowed college professor (Richard Jenkins) who travels to New York to attend a conference and is surprised to find an interracial, Arab couple living at his apartment. He quickly befriends them after learning that they have nowhere to stay and offers them his place while they search for an alternative and he takes a healthy interest in learning how to play drums from the husband.
The film is interesting enough by remaining focused on just the lives of these three characters, much like Jim Sheridian’s similarly themed In American. Between them there is potential for a blend of both interesting situations for viewers to find it tolerably entertaining and critics to consider it character-driven. Motivated by aspirations however, the film turns into a mocking critic of the new Post-9/11 America. This is unnecessary and reeks of pandering to liberal guilt, all the more so because the film never makes its point of view very clear or takes a stand. The catalyst for this present day commentary is the illegal status of the Arab couple — Tarek, the husband, from Syria, but originally of Palestinian descent, his wife from Senegal. Tarek is caught during a random check at the subway and sent into detention at a prison. This is where the film dabbles in complications and themes of government mistrust and abuse that are never very clearly laid out.
Its point of view is that America used to be a different place in the past, thriving on its diversity; that it was more tolerant and outsiders were welcome. All of these are fair observations, but the film is either too simplistic (Jenkins impulsively decides to stay on an extended trip from work), or too idealistic, never explaining why all of these people stick together. The films one gift to the audience is Jenkins himself. You may remember him from small roles in multiple films from the Coen’s (most recently as the play-it-safe gym manager from Burn After Reading), or as Charlize Theron’s father from North Country. Here he takes on a leading role and does it justice by adding great depth, even when at the centre of a silly unspoken supposed romance with Tarek’s mother, who arrives to check on her son, but also decides to accompany Jenkins character on a tour of Broadway while her son rots in prison. Though extremely well written as a character study, the film lacks perspective and treads a path as certain as death – the professor will discover himself and find a reason to live again. Without even trying, The Visitor falls into the trap of a self righteous message movie.
