Product Description: Hailed as "one of the year's most intriguing dramas" (Claudia Puig, USA TODAY), The Visitor stars Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) in a perfect performance (Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) as Walter, a disaffected college professor who has been drifting aimlessly through his life. When, in a chance encounter on a trip into New York, Walter discovers a couple has taken up residence in his apartment in the city, he develops an unexpected and profound connection to them that will change his life forever. As challenges arise for his tenants, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friends, and rediscovers a passion he thought he had lost long ago. The year's first genuine must-see film" (Ann Hornaday, THE WASHINGTON POST) about rediscovering life's rhythms in the most unexpected places
Amazon.com: A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of homeless, illegal aliens living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vital Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek’s drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally arrived. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewed if subdued interest in courtship. But the wheels of injustice in immigration crush all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes his unexpected capacity for anger over Tarek’s plight, and the positive changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his friend and Mouna, might be the only legacy he takes from this experience. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story about change and renewal, and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has surely come. --Tom Keogh
Finding friends in unlikely places. I was eager to see this movie. It was written and directed by the man who both wrote and directed a movie that I really enjoy: The Station Agent. Both movies feature a theme of a solitary man finding friends in the least likely of circumstances.
Richard Jenkins plays the protagonist in The Visitor and, while it is not the most dynamic role, he was great. It was not his performance, however, that should get you to see this movie. Haaz Sleiman may be a one-hit wonder, but I hope not. He is Tarek, the illegal immigrant that Jenkins's character finds living in his apartment in New York City. He is tremendously charismatic.
This is not the fastest-paced movie. Please be patient, this movie is worth your time.
In a World of Six Billion People, it Only Takes One to Change Your Life At the start of The Visitor, Richard Jenkins (Cheaper by the Dozen) is your typical burned out professor who just white outs the term and year on the syllabus, and only if he remembers. Criticism isn't his strong suit either as he has been through five piano teachers without a second lesson. Just your typical mid life crisis, but about ten years after he should have grown out of it.
All that changes when he has to go to a conference in New York City and a couple has taken up residence in his apartment there in his absence. Instead of calling the police like a normal person, Jenkins, longing for some human contact out of the norm and let the two Muslims stay. In Haaz Sleiman (American Dreamz), Jenkins finds a teacher that doesn't just dismiss him learning the djembe (a Syrian drum) at such an old age.
This first half of the film is as exhilarating as Jenkins taking up the foreign instrument with plenty of great music that moves the movie along. But not surprising considering the origins of the house guests, the second half delves into a heavy handed commentary on the immigration policies in a post-9/11 world. Even during the first half, you know it is coming, but you wish they would have just stayed with the uplifting story of bring people together with music.
A movie to remind us that we all come from somewhere Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), an insular, lonely economics professor at an upscale Connecticut college, is tapped by his superiors to present a paper at a conference in New York City, though he resists as strongly as he is able. He very reluctantly complies, only to find himself jarred out of his complacent misery when he arrives in New York by finding squatters in the apartment he has maintained for many years. The pair, a Senegalese woman (Danai Gurira) and her Syrian boyfriend (Haaz Sleiman),both illegal aliens, have sublet the apartment from a total stranger. Walter's reaction, after a great deal of thought, is to take them in until they can find suitable lodgings. The movie progresses deceptively slowly...you imagine more time has passed than actually happens...and the relationship between the three evolves naturally and believeably. Tarek, the man from Syria, takes an instant liking to his benefactor and when Walter exhibits an interest in Tarek's talent (playing the djembe, an African drum), Tarek turns Walter into the most incongruous member of a drum circle in Central Park. Only Zaineb, the Senegalese woman, shows real wariness; she's been involved in troubles to do with immigration before, and she doesn't totally trust Walter for a long time, until circumstances force her to admit that Walter has a true friendship for both of his impromptu lodgers. Very few movies in the past few years have brought me to tears, but this movie is so beautifully wrought and staged, with unsurpassed acting from everyone involved, that I cannot recommend it highly enough. It will touch your heart in ways that you did not think possible.
Poignant A friend said this was a wonderful movie and thought I would also enjoy it. Lovely sweet and sad story of a man who unexpectedly finds himself involved in the lives of strangers.
Profoundly human drama I was so amazing impressed by the Station Agent that I saw it twice and was thrilled when I heard that Thomas had directed another movie. If anything the visitor was better. Both were such human portrayals of friendship, goodness, and brokenness. Unlike any other American filmmaker I know of, Thomas McCarthy has an uncanny ability to empathize with the human condition with his films (is that too abstract of a praise?). Anyway, I hope he makes many more films (but never becomes famous). I will watch every one.
Btw, Does anyone know what his next directorial project will be?
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