Scott BresslerThe Visitor
Rating: 4/5
Starring: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira
Directed by: Thomas McCarthy
Release Date: April 18, 2008
At the start of “The Visitor,” we’re introduced to old Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) as he’s practicing piano with his tutor. She can’t be more than five years older than he is. After she makes an awkward comment on his form (he’s told to arch his fingers so “the train can come through”), he realizes he just might be too old to be treated like a child.
He doesn’t want to act like an adult, though. A man of few words, he’s equally choosy with his activities. As a tenured professor, he’s lightened his teaching schedule to one meaningless course, and he uses his free time to wonder why he doesn’t make better use of his time.
Running parallel to Walter’s life is the tumultuous story of Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira). They’re illegal immigrants and they coincidentally live in Walter’s old New York apartment. Brought to the Big Apple for a conference on Third World countries, Walter walks in on a bathing Zainab. Her reaction is priceless, but Tarek’s is downright frightening, not because he throws Walter against the wall, but because he thinks he has to use force to stay in America.
Why would he want to stay here, anyway? What initially seems like a veiled criticism of our country is merely the seed for a full-blown condemnation of America’s immigration policies. The hypocrisy is widely encompassing, from a clueless New Yorker who doesn’t know there is a difference between Cape Town and Senegal to an immigrant holding facility that houses clueless receptionists and posters celebrating America’s diversity.
Tarek is incarcerated for a non-crime, but he is not demoralized. All of his joy in America comes from his homeland, from playing his African drums. And although Walter isn’t a direct victim of conservative politics, he feels comfortable timidly tapping the Djembe. This is where “The Visitor” shines. Watching Walter rock out on the streets with Tarek-between white-collar paper readings that only boil down to accomplishments in pathos-shows how far away our foreign policies are from actually understanding other cultures.
The rhythm is as infectious as it is enlightening, and both the audience and Walter fall under its spell. While Walter never literally loosens his tie, he does finally develop his own self, along with some happy quirks. True, some of his forays into the life of a drummer aren’t so smooth (like when he jokingly tells Zainab not to worry about him, he’ll “keep his pants on”), but he does embrace the culture he’d never really been able to experience in all those years of studying Third World countries.
Walter may have grown up on his deceased wife’s classical music, but you’ve never seen an old man bob his head with more joy as you’ll see when he hears Tarek play. Richard Jenkins is stellar in showing Walter’s transformation from a reluctant scholar to a budding musician to an enlightened American. If only the movie could have transitioned as seamlessly.
About halfway through, “The Visitor” stops moving. The plot becomes stagnant with Tarek in jail, and the injection of his mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), feels like a quick and dirty way to give Walter a bit of romance and to give Zainab more background, both of which were wholly unnecessary. This slow section obviously mirrors the frustratingly tedious process that takes hold once an illegal citizen is thrust into the bureaucratic system, but it could have been introduced much more cleanly.
The ending, however, completely makes up for the previous 30 minutes of film. When you look at Walter and Tarek, you see that the supposedly easiest things to come by are actually the hardest to get. After it’s all said and done, we’re left with open-ended thoughts and undefined moral systems, a primal mix of doing the right thing and obeying the law.