The Visitor
Anyone who saw the fifth season of “The Wire” knows that Tom McCarthy is a skilled actor. But I’d be happy if McCarthy never acted again if that meant he devoted all his energy to writing and directing. “The Visitor,” McCarthy’s second feature, establishes him as a remarkable moviemaker. It’s crisp and confident, with hardly a wasted shot or line of dialogue. It addresses sticky and prickly themes – illegal immigration, the legacy of nine-eleven and the grieving process – without ever stating them explicitly. “The Visitor” just watches as ordinary people try to get on with their lives. The consummate character actor Richard Jenkins stars as Walter Vale, a burned-out economics professor at a small Connecticut college. Dispatched to Manhattan for a conference, Walter finds a young couple living in his long-neglected apartment, and, motivated more by loneliness and boredom than by compassion, he allows them to stay. Walter’s visitors are undocumented immigrants, one from Syria, one from Senegal, and while they quickly warm to their host, his presence leads to complications that eventually involve the young man’s mother, played by the luminous Hiam Abbass. As a director, McCarthy finds lucid emotions in New York locations – the vibrancy of Washington Square Park, the menace of a Queens warehouse, the romance of the Staten Island Ferry. And he never reduces his noble, believably flawed characters to symbols of global injustice as in “Crash” or “Babel.” “The Visitor” earns a long stay in the hearts and minds of moviegoers.
LISTEN: The Visitor