The Visitor (2007)

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

Director:

Tom McCarthy

Writer:

Tom McCarthy

Stars:

Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 19 wins & 34 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:

professor | conference | lawyer | connecticut | economics | 

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Taglines:

connection is everything

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Genres:

Drama

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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:

23 May 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

O Visitante

Filming Locations:

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

Box Office

Budget:

$4,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$86,488, 13 April 2008, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$9,422,422, 5 October 2008

Company Credits

Production Co:

Groundswell Productions, Next Wednesday Productions, Participant Media

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

In New York airport, the flight was announced as "flight to Syria", although it should actually name the airport (Damascus), not the country. But more importantly, there is no direct non-stop flight from New York to Syria.

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Quotes

Tarek Khalil: Oh shit! We have to get home! Zainab's gonna kill me, I'm on Arab time again.
Prof. Walter Vale: What is "Arab time"?
Tarek Khalil: It means I'm late by an hour. All Arabs are late by an hour, it's genetic, we can't help it.

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Crazy Credits

Baldwin's L2 grand piano

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Connections

Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Inspiring Immigration Movies (2017)

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Soundtracks

Trade Winds
Written & Performed by Jonathan Dinklage

User Reviews

The Visitor

The Visitor strings together unlikely events in the lives of a professor and his visitors. Remarkably sincere and touching, the unimaginable events feel natural.

Awkward Connecticut economics professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) has essentially checked out from his job, his personality and his life. Walter is forced by circumstance to return to his abandoned New York City apartment. When he returns he meets Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira), who have taken up unauthorized residence in his apartment. Tarek and Zainab teach Walter to live again, to come out of his shell and remind him how unfair life can be.

Writer and director Thomas McCarthy wrote all of the characters in The Visitor with almost contradictory personality attributes which gives them each a complex humanity.

McCarthy wrote Walter Vale painfully dull and bumbling but it was Richard Jenkins who also makes Walter charming and heart breaking. In nearly every setting, Jenkins both makes the audience scrunch their faces at Walter's social inadequacies while simultaneously bringing out our Florence Nightingale instincts. As Walter changes in the course The Visitor, Jenkins keeps the essential qualities of Walter but changes him in surprising ways.

The supporting cast isn't any less remarkable in The Visitor. There is a master of life, a vision of unabashed sadness and an embodiment of sensual motherly warmth. Haaz Sleiman, who plays Tarek, is (damn foxy) full of life as Tarek. His esprit fills Tarek, the audience, the other characters and actors with such vitality. Danai Jekesai Guria plays Zainab, Tarek's girlfriend. So much of Zainab is forlorn despondent dejection. Rich with beautiful hardness and unnaturally attractive pain, Danai Jekesai Guria made Zainab so hard to watch but impossible to pull your eyes away from. Hiam Abbass plays Mouna, Tarek's mother. Her fear is palpable but she never loses her intangible sensuality.

The most remarkable part of The Visitor is the way it organically shows the way life can change un-expectantly, unfairly and without warning and does it with real, raw emotion. Just when you think you've figured out what the movie is about, you slapped with a new reality. It is frightening, timely and angering. Even the ending, which is not the typical movie ending, is emotive in a subtle and realistic way. I was not overwhelmed or underwhelmed by the movie, I was perfectly whelmed; a task indeed.

The pacing is the one complaint I have with The Visitor. The editing could have been much better. There are beautiful scenes sometimes drawn out to boredom. Scenes that were the actors' timing is slightly off are only highlighted by the shoddy editing. The Visitor is an artsy movie but Tom McArdle checked out completely in a few of the scenes.

Slow bits aside, The Visitor is a rewarding film with rich characters, beautiful acting and complexities that might make those people who are quick to tears, cry.