When worlds collide

>>The American immigration experience
is exposed in the powerful
tearjerker The Visitor

by CHRIS SYKES

The Visitor really should be a dud. Consider the synopsis: widowed college professor stumbles over a young couple illegally renting his long vacant NYC flat. On a whim, professor allows couple to stay and is introduced to the djembe drums, which fill a void that his tenure and six-figure salary in Connecticut couldn’t. Chaos ensues as one of the renters lands in a detention centre for illegal immigrants. Legal battle over deportation ensues. I doubt you’re running to buy a ticket.

Yet writer/director Thomas McCarthy (who directed the The Station Agent and played weaselly reporter Scott Templeton on The Wire) finds a way to convey the heartfelt in his sophomore effort thanks in large part to the strength and chemistry of his cast.

Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under, North Country) excels as Walter—a lonely, disenchanted academic living off his previous merits. Jenkins’ performance is trumped only by newcomer Haaz Sleiman, whose character Tarek lacks a green card yet musters a career as a happy-go-lucky percussionist.

While Walter merely provides Tarek and his girlfriend Zainab (played by the stunning Danai Gurira) with a roof over their heads, the young Syrian inspires a renaissance in the middle-aged man: a newly found joie de vivre encompassing a mutual love for the djembe and for placing the needs of others before his own. Devastated by the plight of Tarek’s detention—and feeling partially responsible—Walter pledges to assist in his defence and forms an emotional bond with Tarek’s mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass of Munich).

As a whole, The Visitor is a highly politicized and scathing critique of American immigration policy since the post-9/11 crackdown on illegals. And why shouldn’t it be? The irony of a country dependent on low-wage illegal immigrants yet actively combating them is not lost on McCarthy. Characters cast in positions of power (NYPD, immigration officers, lawyers) are themselves visible minorities, some only a generation removed from their own family’s struggles.

The duality is all deliciously summed up by a poster hanging on the wall of Tarak’s detention centre: “The Strength of America: It’s Immigrants.” It’s a heart-wrenching story of bad things happening to good people. Pack the Kleenex: it’s a literal tearjerker.

The Visitor opens this
Friday, April 25

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