Film Description
| The Visitor | ||
| Director: | Thomas McCarthy |  |
| Country: | USA | |
| Year: | 2007 | |
| Time: | 103 minutes | |
| Rating: | PG | |
| Principal Cast: | Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira | |
| Trailer: | View the trailer for this film | |
| SCREENING TIMES | |||
| Saturday, July 26, 2008 | 9:30 PM Outdoors | Colio Estate Winery* | Tickets: $10.00 at |
| *For information on wine tour and tasting packages, click here | |||
American filmmakers right now are creating some of the most impressive cinema ever made about the human cost of politics and war. One of the finest examples at TIFF 2007 was The Visitor, the pitch-perfect sophomore feature from Thomas McCarthy, who attended TIFF in 2003 with his beloved debut, The Station Agent. Here he returns with a beautifully poised and flawlessly acted paean to humanist hope in our ever-darkening age.
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a lonely widower, withdrawn from life and barely contributing professionally to the suburban Connecticut university where he is a professor.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 his 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 celebrated 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, particularly the great Palestinian actress Abbass as Mouna. The scenes between Jenkins and Abbass are almost impossibly tender and memorably romantic, due in no small part to this remarkable young director.
