The Visitor

By the time the Oscars were broadcast this year, there were only two feature films among the nominees (outside the documentary and foreign film categories) that I hadn't seen in the theater, because they had come out earlier in the year, before I started going to see every movie.

Fortunately they had both come out on DVD, so I used Netflix to catch up. The first movie on my list was The Visitor, a small independent film for which Richard Jenkins was nominated for Best Actor.

Watching movies on DVD here at my sister's place is almost like going to a theater, because of their large flat-screen television mounted on the wall, and the awesome sound system set up by my brother-in-law, who is an audio-video connoisseur of sorts. He's very picky about having things just right, in a good way.

The DVD arrived while I was in New York for my trip. When I watched the film, I was struck by the irony that so much of the movie takes place in exactly the places I had just visited: the West Village, Washington Square Park, and NYU. On my Sunday walk up to Harlem, I had even heard the drum circle players in Central Park, and had seen the musicians in the Broadway subway station, which is in the final scene. I had even come into the City from Connecticut, which was a first for me. The whole movie felt like a blurring of life and art, which is an odd but not unpleasant sensation.

The movie is another powerful statement regarding the taboo subject of loneliness in contemporary American life (I was just reading a nonfiction book in Nashua, N.H. that said Americans will generally much more readily admit to being depressed than being lonely).

The very first shot of the movie establishes the character in powerful fashion: he is standing in his house by himself with his back turned towards us. He is looking out the window with a glass of wine in his hand. The scene that follows establishes what the character wants: he wants to learn to play music, and he wants someone with whom he can share a glass of wine. In the following scene, he is in his office at a university. He coldly repulses a student, and we learn everything we need to know about how he treats his college teaching. The writer, director, actor all collaborate to paint a solid portrait in only a few short minutes. This is the stuff that makes for really great movies.

The story is told with subtlety in the narrative, including many small ironies that I didn't pick up on until later. For example, in the opening scene, the piano teacher tells him to "make room for the train" with his fingers as he plays at the keyboard. This seems like an innocent statement at the time, yet it turns out to encapsulate his entire journey in the movie, which will eventually see him letting go of many parts of his life in order to play a different musical instrument inside a train station.

He gives away an instrument. He gets a new one as a gift. The "tunnel" made by his fingers becomes a literal one that surrounds his entire body. Out of his hands have come the new reality into which he has placed himself. Do stories get any better than this?

His repelling of his student at the beginning is mirrored in the way that a immigration service detention guard treats him.

The sharing of wine also becomes a journey fulfilled, but only after he has abandoned his attempt to share it. It eventually comes from an unexpected drinking partner.

As a final gift to us, the movie refused to go for a cheap, sentimental ending. It left things complicated, and thus with real emotional depth. I'm really glad Jenkins got nominated for this film.