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The Visitor

Sep. 7 at 4:15 & 7; Sep. 8 at 7 in Owen Sound
Sep. 10 at 6:45 in Port Elgin

The Visitor

The Visitor, a Special Presentation at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival is the pitch-perfect sophomore feature from Thomas McCarthy, whose beloved debut, The Station Agent (2003) is a film Circuit favourite.  Here he returns with a beautifully poised and flawlessly acted paean to humanist hope in our ever-darkening age.

Water Vale (Rickard Jenkins, I Heart Huckabees, The Kingdom) is a lonely widower, withdrawn from life and barely contributing professionally to the suburban Connecticut university where he is a professor.  When he reluctantly goes into New York City for a conference, he finds an undocumented couple living in his long-vacant Manhattan pied-à-terre.  He ends up befriending them, especially Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Syrian street musician.   But Tarek is profiled by the police at a subway station and incarcerated, becoming subject to imminent deportation.  When Tarek’s widowed mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass), appears, Walter’s connection to this family in distress deepens and his narrowed horizons expand.

McCarthy tells this story with simple, unadorned precision that belies the great visual beauty and narrative care with which the film is assembled.  Calm and observant  he leaves much space for his actors.  They gradually point the way for us to a place where tolerance becomes active engagement, where the dehumanizing effects of the ”War on Terror” become impossible to ignore. 

The cast is led by the accomplished Jenkins, known mostly for memorable supporting appearances and his celebrate role on “Six Feet Under.”  He is brilliant here, delivering a slow-burn performance that functions both as a great character study and as a metaphor for standoffish frightened America  The other cast members are uniformly excellent too, particular the great Palestinian actress Abbass as Mouna.  The scenes between Jenkins and Abbass are almost impossibly tender and memorably romantic, do in no small part the this remarkable young director.

Director:   Thomas McCarthy

Cast:  Richard Jenkins, Haaz sleiman, Danai Jekesai Guirira, Hiam Abbass

Run Time:  103 minutes

Country:  USA

Year:  2009

Language:  English

Rating:  PG