The Visitor (2007)

Richard Jenkins is one of those character actors you see often, and often take for granted. If there is one great thing about indie films (and, for the record, there are a number of great things about them), it’s the opportunity for criminally overlooked thespians of a certain age or look to shine in leading roles. Paul Giamatti had American Splendor, Melissa Leo has Frozen River, and so on. For Jenkins, the plum vehicle (to date) was The Visitor, a riveting drama in which he burrows under the skin of a disaffected college professor who is afforded a new lease on life.

Don’t roll your eyes just yet. The misanthropic academic type is an indie cliché, true, but writer-director Thomas McCarthy is a master of keen observations.

Jenkins portrays Walter Vale, a widowed college professor who long ago settled into solitude. The only change to his class syllabus is the year, which he alters with the help of Liquid Paper (remember liquid paper?). He protests when the college dean tells him he must present an academic paper at a conference in New York, but Walter reluctantly does so with the reassurance that soon enough he will be back in his Connecticut cocoon.

Walter receives a surprise when he lugs a suitcase into the New York apartment that he has sublet for more than 20 years. A young foreign couple is already living there, the victims of a scam. Grudgingly, Walter allows the couple to stay until they can find other accommodations.

As days pass, Walter warms up to the couple, particularly Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), an open-hearted Syrian djembe drummer who is eager to teach the professor how to play the African instrument. Tarek’s girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira), a jewelry maker from Senegal, is more reserved and skeptical of their older American host. 

A crisis suddenly develops when Tarek, an undocumented immigrant, is arrested at a subway terminal and hustled to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Queens. Walter’s stay in New York turns indefinite as he works to prevent the young man from being deported to a country he does not know, receiving some help when Tarek’s mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up from her home in Detroit.

The movie wades into the time period’s politically charged waters of terrorism and illegal immigration, but it is hardly polemical. McCarthy asks some provocative questions in that arena, but what drives him is the humanity of his characters. Like McCarthy’s directorial debut, 2003’s The Station Agent, The Visitor explores the dynamics of a makeshift community of people who are desperate to make a connection, even if (as in Walter’s case) not all of them even recognize their yearning. The emotionally aloof college professor and the young foreign couple find commonality in their alien status — one figurative, one literal — and, certainly in the friendship of Walter and Tarek, the universal power of music.

The Visitor rarely hits a false note. It is multilayered on several levels, not the least of which is how McCarthy and his players flesh out the intricacies of various relationships. Walter’s interactions with the principals — as well as Tarek with Zainab, and Zainab with Mouna — are subtle and believable. You sense that these characters are not merely the sketches of a writer, but rather people with quirks and worldviews and temperaments. 

As compelling as McCarthy’s script and direction are, a great deal of credit goes to his outstanding cast. Still, it is Jenkins who delivers the performance around which all the others orbit. Sean Penn won the Best Actor Academy Award that year for Milk, but it shoulda been Jenkins’.

If accomplished acting and complex themes sound like indie-film fodder, it should be noted that McCarthy also happens to be a gifted storyteller. The movie is heartbreaking and funny. It dispenses information with precision, excising clunky expository scenes without sacrificing clarity. While McCarthy doesn’t shy away from ambiguities, especially in a haunting final image, he also isn’t one for narrative fat. Everything in The Visitor is there for a purpose.