I don’t have a laundry list of common traits for Tom McCarthy’s films – not like I did for Buster Keaton – although he does have a number of tools he regularly employs in his writing. Instead, I’m focusing today on what I think of as the quintessential Tom McCarthy character dynamic.
I use The Station Agent
for my template, since it’s the first film McCarthy wrote, as well as the first
of his that I saw. It’s in that movie
that we see the prime example of what seems to be McCarthy’s preferred
relationship arc. Our protagonist is
Finn, a softspoken loner who, upon inheriting an abandoned train depot in rural
New Jersey, moves into it with the intention of enjoying the solitude. However, his peace and quiet is disrupted by
Joe, an exuberantly extroverted hot dog vendor with a passion for making
friends, and Olivia, a lonely artist still struggling with a lingering personal
tragedy. Despite Finn’s insistence that
he doesn’t want anyone in his life, his new acquaintances/friends slowly start
making their way past his defenses.
This film, then, gives us our basic character formations. We have the Finn, the Joe, and the
Olivia. Though the precise details of
these characters’ personalities, meetings, and subsequent interactions vary, we
see them repeat themselves throughout a number of McCarthy’s works. Take McCarthy’s second film, The Visitor. Walter, our lead character, is definitely a
Finn. A widowed college professor
shuffling through a stagnant existence, Walter’s isolation weighs more heavily
on him than Finn’s, but even so, he’s resistant to the unexpected new additions
to his circle of acquaintances, a young immigrant couple (to be fair, that’s in
part because he finds them squatting in his mostly-unused second home in
NYC.) Still, his loneliness spurs him to
accept Tarek and Zainab’s tentative offers of companionship, and his life soon
changes radically as Tarek introduces him to the djembe and the world of street
drumming. As a character, Zainab is a
little more nebulous, but friendly, cheerful Tarek is undeniably a Joe. Meanwhile, Tarek’s mother Mouna, who appears
in the second half of the film, gives off some reasonable Olivia vibes with the
gently-hesitant bond she develops with Walter in the midst of a tough time.
What really clinches the format me, though, is Up.
Even though every Pixar movie is obviously a major group effort and McCarthy
is maybe the least significant of the film’s three writers, it’s essentially a
fantastical adventure story about a Finn who’s surrounded by Joes. Sad,
cranky Carl has shut everyone out since his wife died, and he’s planning to
spend the rest of his life on a patch of virtually-untouched jungle – can’t be
much more alone than that! However,
Russell, a young wilderness explorer scout tenaciously pursuing his “assisting
the elderly” badge, has other ideas. Not
only does the irrepressible Russell wind up accidentally stowing away on Carl’s
adventure, he also starts acquiring new animal friends the second they arrive
in Paradise Falls. Russell is plenty
Joe-ish, as is the pestery exotic bird Kevin, but Dug – a golden retriever
fitted with an electronic collar that translates his thoughts/barks into human
speech – is Joe all over. I mean, “I have just met you, and I love you
[platonically]” could pretty much be Joe’s life motto.
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