The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, 2008)

In just two films, director Thomas McCarthy has shown himself to be an adept, minimalist storyteller. Observant and, even better, patient, McCarthy lets his stories unfold in a naturalistic manner that allows the actors room to find the story without feeling the need to force big moments.

When McCarthy approached the regular character actor Richard Jenkins about staring in his next film, The Visitor, Jenkins said something that amounted to “Sure, but the producers won’t fund it with me in the lead.” McCarthy simply told him not to worry about that and cast him anyway.

He knows his characters, his story and he casts the actors that will best fill his story’s needs (it seems that his own acting experience has gone a long way towards helping him trust his actors). What was the much-loved (especially by me) The Station Agent but a clinic on the power of a silent scene, brilliantly assaulted by Bobby Cannavale’s overly garrulous Joe?

In fact, The Visitor, another character study film based on a reclusive outsider brought back to the world by an enormously affable new companion, shares a lot of similarities with McCarthy’s only other directorial work. These films are chock full of moments that would be excised from other, lesser films. They’re full of silent, retrospective moments, humor and real relationships and conversations. In fact, the only drawback I can think of to The Visitor is it’s sometimes too much like real life and its conversations tend to reflect that by not always being the most attractive of dialogue.

But how invigorating is it to see a director dedicated to making grown up stories and to finding new talent (Haaz Sleiman as Tarek is as great a find as Cannavale and Dinklage were). By keeping his budgets modest, McCarthy has somehow managed to work inside the studio system and meanwhile keep his stories and characters intact. That’s why he can turn a profit, even with the relatively unknown Richard Jenkins in the starring role.

The sad-eyed Jenkins is exceptionally good as Walter Vale, a college professor whose wife recently passed and who starts the film heartbreakingly trying to learn her life’s passion, the piano, only to be told he’s not naturally gifted at it and probably too old to learn.

Recently, he’s decreased the number of classes he teaches, in order to focus on writing his latest book but ends up spending most of his time at home, alone with a glass of wine and his wife’s CD to listen to. It’s only when he’s forced to present a paper he “co-authored” with a colleague at a conference in New York that he’s reluctantly thrust out of his self-imposed routine (that his colleague is about to give birth doesn’t dissuade him from still trying to pass off the task to her).

It’s in New York, much like when Finn from The Station Agent moves to Newfoundland, that Walter is forced to confront the outside world… it just happens from inside his own long-discarded apartment, where he finds both Tarek and Zainab, illegal immigrants to the states, have been living for the past three months. After some initial confusion and apologies (the couple thought they were renting the place from its rightful landlord), the same humanistic elements that touched Finn persuade Walter into letting them stay “until they find another place.”

The immigration story ultimately has more on its mind and more of a message then the beautifully low-maintenance Station Agent, which doesn’t necessarily make it a better (or worse) film. It’s just a different angle that McCarthy has decided to take on similar material. He puts a face on a relevant political subject and because that face is Tarek’s, a character so imbued with an affirmation and love for life, it makes it next-to-impossible to ignore. After all, McCarthy’s characters are only looking for a sense of belonging, to each other and even to this country. They do, as does McCarthy with that camera.