STUDIO: Overture Films
RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2008
STARRING: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, and Hiam Abbass
WRITTEN BY: Thomas McCarthy
DIRECTED BY: Thomas McCarthy
GENRE: Drama
RATING: PG-13

There are very few writer/directors who have mastered that intangible sensation that the characters they're sharing with you live and breathe outside of the frame and running time of the story you're being told. It's what often separates merely good dramas from great ones. Thomas McCarthy is definitely one of those writer/directors. (He's also an actor, appearing most recently as Scott Templeton on the last season of The Wire.) His debut, The Station Agent, was a gentle and sweet tale with the kind of believable characters that you don't see that often in cinema. It heralded the debut of an actor-turned-director who clearly understood people and refused to put them into cliched, plot-driven situations. Even with my admiration of The Station Agent, I was stunned at the improvement on display in McCarthy's second film, The Visitor, open already in New York and Los Angeles and opening in more major markets today before heading across the country. The film has already played several festivals to standing ovations and is, quite simply, the best narrative film of the year so far. It's a moving piece of drama with career-best work by Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) that is so deftly told that it's hard to believe that anyone out there, except maybe the most hardcore action or horror junkies, couldn't get something out of it. In other words, if you like a dramatic story well told, The Visitor is going to be one of your favorite movies of the year.

Here's the tough part. I'd never suggest that you surf away to another site, but The Visitor works better the less you know. So, I'm going to walk more carefully with plot details than I otherwise would and recommend that, perhaps, you bookmark this review and come back after you see it. Trust me. You won't be disappointed.

Now that the spoiler warning, of sorts, is out of the way, the basic inciting action of The Visitor happens when a lonely and stuffy professor named Walter Vale (Jenkins) reluctantly comes to New York for a presentation he doesn't really want to give. Upon opening the door of his own apartment, one he barely checks in on, much less sleeps in, Walter finds a naked woman in his bathtub. He's immediately confronted by her boyfriend and realizes that some nefarious soul has rented out his abode, knowing that the actual owner is never there and making some change off a couple of desperate immigrants. At first, Walter kicks the pair - Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira) - to the bus stop, but when he realizes that they don't really have anywhere to go, he allows them to stay for at least the night. Over the next few days, Walter grows closer to his roommates, even learning how to play a tribal drum from Tarek and opening himself up to new people and personalities.

Tragedy finds its way into this unusual threesome but not in a way that you'll ever see coming, and the film isn't nearly as manipulative or corny as its premise makes it sound. Jenkins, who has been a stellar character actor for years, has said that this is the part of his career, the one he was hoping would come along eventually and he's Oscar-worthy in the role. Every note Jenkins hits is startlingly believable. The idea of a lonely old professor playing a drum in Central Park sounds ridiculous on paper - like a Lifetime TV movie and a bad one at that - but Jenkins makes it real. And it's that foundation set by him in just the early scenes that allows what happens next to have the dramatic weight that it does.

The Visitor is a film about the music of chance, about how the littlest decisions that we make can have a ripple effect that can, in the case of this story, be heard around the world. It's a delicate subject matter that has been explored by authors like Paul Auster and even filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock (most of his movies were about people being in the wrong place or seeing the wrong thing at the wrong time). And yet, the themes of The Visitor aren't oppressive or repetitive. Walter, Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna (Tarek's mother, played by the luminous and also nomination-worthy Hiam Abbass) all feel like real people. These characters feel like they exist before the cameras roll and after the credits are done, and it is the audience who are the true visitors, inspired by just getting to spend some time with them.