The Visitor

We watched a great movie this weekend.

My idea of a great movie has changed a fair amount over time. So much of what once appealed to me seems to do the exact opposite now. I was talking to a buddy, Zak, about music, and he said that he has to feel as though the guy he's listening to has put himself out there.. left it all on the table. It's a matter of knowing that the guy has really poured himself into the work. I like that. If it didn't feel like it cost a part of your soul to create it, than maybe it doesn't have much soul in it at all.

I've been really appreciating great acting. It seems like the movies I've loved in the past while have been all about actors and directors at the top of their game. 'Frost/Nixon', 'Marley and Me' (ya, seriously). I just bought in, fully. That's the best thing about movies. They just transport you. Which is, I suppose, why I like a specific type of movie. You can always kindof tell when a movie is mostly just about itself, and it's never an experience that really takes me.

Anyway, the movie we watched was 'The Visitor'. The actor is Richard Jenkins. It's about a chance meeting he has with a couple that's living in the country illegally, trying to make ends meet. They've done due diligence. They followed the procedures set out by immigration when they arrived, and then they waited. By the time they heard back, it had been a few years, and they had settled in. They had dodged the bullet. They were here, they had jobs, they were home. Then they were told to go home. Only.. home was, at that point, in their minds, an undefined idea.

It strikes me particularly, maybe, because we live in a community that is made up, largely, of immigrants. People trying to create home, trying to escape bad situations, trying to find, or create, 'normal'. The movie has a beautiful way of pitting one struggle against another.

In a white, suburban life where financial stability is a foregone conclusion, work is easy to find, and there aren't many things standing between a person and what might be considered a comfortable life, there are other demons.

In what is truly an aggressively real scene, everything comes to a head, and Walter (Richard Jenkins) reacts to the frustration that so many of us discuss internally on a daily basis.. to unfairness, or injustice, or inequality... or just whatever it is that makes life what it is.

It's a very big movie in a very small package... sometimes it seems like they always come that way. The smaller it is.. the less glossy...

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/thevisitor/

Watch it if you can!
JB