The Visitor (I) (2007)

A college professor travels to New York City to attend a conference and finds a young couple living in his apartment.

Director:

Thomas McCarthy

Writer:

Thomas McCarthy

Stars:

Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 18 wins & 19 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Richard Jenkins	...	Walter
Haaz Sleiman	...	Tarek
Danai Gurira	...	Zainab
Hiam Abbass	...	Mouna
Marian Seldes	...	Barbara
Maggie Moore	...	Karen
Michael Cumpsty	...	Charles
Bill McHenry	...	Darin
Richard Kind	...	Jacob
Tzahi Moskovitz	...	Zev
Amir Arison	...	Mr. Shah
Neal Lerner	...	Martin Revere
Ramon Fernandez	...	Cop #1
Frank Pando	...	Cop #2
Waleed Zuaiter	...	Omar

Storyline

In Connecticut, lonely widowed Professor Walter Vale has a boring life. He teaches only one class at the local college and is trying to learn how to play the piano, despite not having the necessary musical talent. Walter is assigned to attend a conference about Global Policy and Development at New York University, where he is to give a lecture about a paper on which he is co-author. When he arrives at his apartment in New York, he finds Tarek Khalil, a Syrian musician, and Zainab, a Senegalese street vendor, living there. He sympathizes with the situation of the illegal immigrants and invites the couple to stay with him. Tarek invites him to go to his gig at Jules Live Jazz. Walter is fascinated with his African drum and Tarek offers to teach Walter to play the drum. However, after an incident in the subway, Tarek is arrested by the police and sent to a detention center for illegal immigrants. Walter has just hired a lawyer to defend Tarek when, out of the blue, Tarek's mother Mouna ...

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Plot Keywords:

apartment | immigrant | class | professor | illegal immigrant | 

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Taglines:

Connection is everything

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Music | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English French Arabic Romanian

Release Date:

4 July 2008 (Ireland)

Also Known As:

O Visitante

Filming Locations:

East Village Wines, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

£48,770 (UK) (4 July 2008)

Gross:

$9,422,422 (USA) (3 October 2008)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Groundswell Productions, Next Wednesday Productions, Participant Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

104 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The parking lot in which Walter parks his car after arriving in New York - on East 11th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue - was torn down shortly after the film was released.

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Goofs

When the student comes to Walter's office to hand in his assignment, the first shot of the student standing in the doorway next to the bookshelves shows a book called "Numerical Recipes," which is a well-known text in computer science and, thus, rather out-of-place in Walter's office. Next to it are both editions of a distinctly esoteric book called "Applied Cryptography" which definitely do not belong. In all subsequent shots these books have been removed, suggesting a re-shoot of the first scene.

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Quotes

Mouna Khalil: [frustrated with ruthless US immigration system] It's just like Syria.

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Connections

Referenced in Ebert Presents: At the Movies: Episode #1.9 (2011)

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Soundtracks

"In Memory of the Dead"
Written by Mohammad Naseehu Ali (ASCAP)
Performed by Bill McHenry, Nic Thys, Haaz Sleiman

User Reviews

McCarthy's Small Film Shows Passion Can Be Found in the Most Unexpected Places

A genuinely unexpected gem. As he proved with his first film as a director and screenwriter, 2003's "The Station Agent", Thomas McCarthy knows how to convey the fine line between solitude and loneliness in his characters' lives with an emotional preciseness that doesn't call attention to itself. It's not surprising that McCarthy is an actor because he's able to capture the very subtle nuances in behavior in actors that make his work feel like Edward Hopper paintings come to life. As a result, you pay attention to a simple gesture, a passing glance, a resigned sigh. This time, his protagonist is Walter Vale, an enervated, middle-aged economics professor at a Connecticut college. Widowed and wholly lacking in professional motivation, he begrudgingly accepts an assignment to go to an academic conference at NYU and present a paper on globalization he really didn't write.

Coming back to a Greenwich Village flat he rarely uses, he is surprised to find a couple living there. Not squatters but unfortunate victims of a rental scam, they turn out to be illegal aliens, a Syrian percussionist named Tarek and his girlfriend Zainab, a Senegalese who makes and sells handcrafted jewelry. As withdrawn from life as Walter is, he slowly finds himself bonding with the couple and lets them stay indefinitely. Zainab is slow to trust Walter, but Tarek and Walter become close over a mutual love of African drums. As his wife was a famous classical pianist, Walter had been futilely attempting to find musical inspiration since her death. However, just as this charming tale of world harmony plays out, it comes back to harsh reality when Tarek is arrested and taken to a detention center in Queens for deportation. What McCarthy does from this point forward is show how sadly restrictive the post-9/11 environment has made immigration laws and how there is no recourse to be found under the constant surveillance of a bureaucratic government protected by the latitude of the Patriot Act.

None of this is hit over our heads with a politically motivated sledgehammer. Far from such polemics, the story singularly focuses on Walter's emergence of purpose in helping Tarek. When Tarek's mother Mouna arrives from Detroit, McCarthy adeptly shows how Walter's closeness to Tarek translates without condition to her. It's a moving transformation of a formerly lonely man finding intimacy in the most unlikely situation. In a once-in-a-lifetime role, character actor Richard Jenkins brings heart and soul to Walter in the most economical manner. Best known as the ghostly father in HBO's "Six Feet Under", he has worked steadily in films for three decades, his most memorable turn being the gay FBI agent high on heroin in David O. Russell's "Flirting with Disaster". With his constant look of resignation on the verge of revelation, Jenkins gives a wondrously poignant, often dryly funny performance that deepens as the story evolves.

Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira are terrifically winning as Tarek and Zainab, and they make their bonding with Walter more than credible. As Mouna, Hiam Abbass is no stranger to persevering maternal roles as she brought her particular brand of strength to Hany-Abu Assad's controversial "Palestine Now" and Eran Riklis' family dramedy, "The Syrian Bride". In response to Walter's fumbling overtures, she affectingly conveys her character's resolute stillness and gradual blossoming. There are brief cameos by comic actor Richard Kind as Walter's unctuous neighbor, Deborah Rush as a wealthy and ignorant customer of Zainab's, and Broadway legend Marian Seldes as Walter's failed piano teacher. At first, I thought the film's title was blandly generic in describing those who are here from other lands, but I realize now that the visitor is really Walter as he discovers his soul. The last shot is memorable and captures the fury of his passion with potent force. Strongly recommended.