The Visitor (2007, PG-13)

I first saw this film, Tom McCarthy’s second after The Station Agent, years ago, and while The Station Agent still holds the top place in my regard, I’ve always liked The Visitor. Seeing it again recently, I was struck by how much more heavy my viewing was under present circumstances (a few spoilers.)

Walter, a widowed economics professor, has been languishing in a rut for years, deeply unhappy but so numb that he barely recognizes it. When a conference takes him into New York City, he returns to his seldom-used apartment to find a young immigrant couple squatting there. To his surprise as much as theirs, Walter begins a shy friendship with the pair and starts to live for the first time in years.

The basic format of this film is very much in line with Tom McCarthy’s favorite kind of story (see also, The Station Agent and Up): softspoken loner is semi-unwillingly adopted by one or more vivacious balls of sunshine, and an unexpected little family is cobbled together. Walter just exudes the air of a man sleepwalking through life, and when he’s shaken up by meeting Tarek and Zainab, he initially resists but almost immediately begins giving in despite himself. That said, the turns the plot takes are its own, and even though Walter’s dynamic with Tarek and Zainab (and later Mouna) reminds me of Finn, Joe, and Olivia or Carl, Russell, Dug, and Kevin, the actual relationships have their own bent.

Seeing it again, I recognize that Tarek in particular might be something of a Magical Brown Person (or maybe a Manic Pixie Dream Muslim?) His position early in the plot is to pull Walter out of his listlessness, make him feel again, and introduce him to the beauty of the djembe (Walter has burned his way through multiple piano teachers, but he takes well to Tarek’s good-natured instruction on the African drum.) However, 1) Tarek is rounded out by the other immigrant characters, and 2) that isn’t his only purpose in the story. As Walter takes greater part in Tarek and Zainab’s world, he’s introduced to music, dishes, and culture that are new to him, but he’s also brought face-to-face with the realities of being a brown or Black immigrant in America, especially a Muslim after 9/11.

That’s where the “under present circumstances” part comes in. Interactions with ICE are harrowing enough to see in this film, made in 2007 – the way any offense can make a person suspect in the eyes of the law, the baffling and callous bureaucratic process, the dehumanization of detention. Thinking about what’s happening now in 2010 to men, women, and children daily is heartwrenching.

All the actors do a fine job with the material. As with The Station Agent, the performances are understated but feel immediately specific and true-to-life. As Walter, Richard Jenkins is a quiet lead, affecting in his stillness. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Haaz Sleiman as the bursting-with-life Tarek (this was the first film I saw Sleiman in, and I’ve yet to see him in another role that makes good use of his talents.) It was also the first film I saw Danai Gurira in (Okoye!), who does well as Zainab, and Hiam Abbass is great as Tarek’s mother Mouna.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, language, and some drinking.

Tom McCarthy’s Bag of Tricks

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.

To be fair, the dynamic isn’t as pronounced in Win Win – with Mike and Kyle, you have some Finn- and Olivia-ish tendencies, but it’s less defined – and Spotlight really doesn’t use it at all (not that there’s room for it in the kind of story that film is telling.)  I also haven’t seen Million Dollar Arm or The Cobbler, so I’m not sure if we see these particular character interactions there.  But even just looking at the three films above, the pattern is clear.