INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Visitor

Four stars (PG-13)

The bad news is that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the only wide release this week, is not being screened for Indianapolis press. The good news is that a well-crafted small film is about to get some extra attention as a result.

The Visitor is a sad, sweet movie written and directed by Tom McCarthy, the man behind the quirky 2003 charmer, The Station Agent. The visitor in question is Walter Vale, a college professor who has been hiding in plain sight since the death of his wife. He only teaches one class and he does it on automatic pilot. He is supposedly working on a new book, but he isn’t writing anything. He tries to learn the piano, a tribute to his recording artist wife, but can’t make his hands follow instructions.

Richard Jenkins plays Walter and he is very good. You know Jenkins. He was the father on Six Feet Under and you’ll recognize his face from character roles in dozens of movies and TV shows.  

When Walter is forced to attend a conference in Manhattan, he goes to his rarely used apartment and is  shocked to discover a married couple living there. A con man “rented” the flat to Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Lebanese man from Syria, and Zainab (Danai Gurira), a woman from Senegal. 

Long story short: Walter invites them to stay while they look for a new place and soon finds himself learning the art of the African drum from Tarek, who plays the dejembe in a jazz band. The two become friends, though Zainab keeps her distance from the polite, soft-spoken man. Then Tarek gets arrested over a subway misunderstanding and thrown into a detention center for illegal aliens. Zainab can’t visit because she’s illegal too and Walter gets deeply involved in the plight of his friend. Matters are complicated further by the arrival of Tarek’s worried mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass), who is determined to stay until her son is released.

All of this may sound like another of those movies where the story of a group of people is told through a white man to make it more accessible to the mainstream audience, but it isn’t. Tarek, Zainab and Mouna are fascinating individuals (and all three actors are excellent), but the visitor here is most certainly Walter. After being withdrawn for so long, faking it to avoid scrutiny from his colleagues, he is a tourist in his own apartment. Tarek teaches him how to play the dejembe and we watch as Walter gradually begins to find his rhythm. This is vitally important for a man so very out-of-step.   

With the illegal immigrant business, some may mistake The Visitor for an issues movie, but that’s not the case either. Part of the film’s appeal is the lack of tubthumping. As with The Station Agent, Tom McCarthy has crafted a beguiling, low-key tale of people from disparate backgrounds that come to to act as a family, if only for a short time. Thoughtfully, gently, he presents genuine people in credible situations and gives the viewer a chance to draw what they will from what they’ve seen. It works. I had planned to include an impassioned paragraph about the prevailing attitude toward illegal immigrants here, but after thinking about the film while writing this essay, I realized you don’t need any tubthumping from me either.