THE VISITOR

What is your place in the world? And how does who you are influence where you end up? Those are just two of the questions I saw answered in writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s quietly sublime film about Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), a professor whose life takes an unexpected but not unwelcome turn that changes the trajectory of his future.

A loner and a widower, Walter lives in Connecticut, where he goes about his daily routine – which includes teaching with a limited amount of passion, and trying to learn to play piano with a limited amount of patience. His life is as regular as a metronome set on 4/4 time. When he’s sent to New York City to present a paper at a conference, a highly reluctant Walter begrudgingly agrees and returns to the apartment he keeps in the city, which he hasn’t visited in years. But when he arrives at his place, he finds two illegal immigrants – amiable, djembe-playing Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and his more-distant girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira) – living there. Walter decides to let them stay, and a moving friendship is formed. Tarek begins teaching Walter the djembe, Walter opens his heart to these veritable strangers and glimpses – for the first time in a long time – a new way to live. Suddenly, Walter is living in 3/3 time.

But, as in life, things change and, about halfway through the film, INS discovers Tarek and promptly detains him. That, in turn, brings yet another new figure into Walter’s suddenly expanding universe: Tarek’s beautiful and sad mother, Mouna (the luminous Hiam Abbass), who arrives in NYC expecting to visit her son and instead finds Walter working to free him from incarceration. A lovely, cautious, delicate dance of two personalities ensues, and the relationship between Walter and Mouna begins to grow.

McCarthy’s equally great previous film, The Station Agent, is very similar in tone and execution to The Visitor. Both involve the intersecting of disparate characters, some of whom are quietly tragic; both are very “small” movies with big hearts; and both eschew many Hollywood clichés and certainly sidestep cookie-cutter Hollywood endings.

Everything about this film is subtle, from its story’s turning points to the performances of its talented cast. In Walter, the changes are tiny...but huge. The rhythm of his existence changes, literally and figuratively, one beat at a time. For Mouna, the shifts are almost undetectable, but they’re there. It’s all about nuance, which is so refreshing to see onscreen. This isn’t the kind of movie where a repressed character suddenly rips off his tie and starts dancing through the streets of Manhattan without shoes on so that you know he’s Figured It Out; it’s more like the kind of movie where something like the character’s change in tie color signals a wealth of growth because he hasn’t really figured anything out...but is open to trying. And I loved that. Huge credit goes to Jenkins and Abbass for their stellar work, and their younger co-stars deserve similar kudos. These are richly realized characters with whom it was a pleasure to spend 100 minutes.