The Visitor (2007)
The Visitor is about a recently widowed college professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) who goes to his apartment in New York to attend a conference from his home in Connecticut, to find a couple living in his apartment. The couple, Tarek and Zainab (Haas Sleiman and Danai Gurira), turn out to be illegal immigrants who were rented Walter’s apartment in a rental scam. Walter invites them to stay with him in the apartment after the mix-up is resolved.
Walter and Tarek start to form a friendship after Tarek slowly teaches Walter the djembe drum. Tarek’s lessons encourages Walter to loosen up and come out of his depression.
In a subway station after a day out together, Tarek is arrested by the police for mistakenly going through the turnstile. When he’s not able to show proper ID, he is transferred to a detention center for illegal immigrants. Walter does his best to help Tarek get out of the detention center, even paying for an immigration attorney, which is ultimately futile.
As Walter gets to know Tarek’s mother, who came from Michigan after worrying about her son, his learning of the treatment of detained immigrants and his friendship with Tarek influences Walter to come out of his shell even more, to start feeling and caring about something again.
The Visitor is a movie about Walter’s renewed identity and the influence that people who come into your life have over you. To me, it is also a movie about understanding, tolerance, and giving people a chance before judging them, before acqueiscing with society’s judgments and going along with their stereotypes.
The movie also shows a contrast between the citizen, Walter, and the foreigner, Tarek. Walter, who has no immigration problems, but is understandably depressed over his wife’s death, is just leading a life of routines that has no meaning anymore. Tarek, on the other hand, in the country with a denied political asylum immigration petition, lives life to the fullest, as best as he can with the help of music, all the while in fear of being caught. In color, culture, and beliefs, it might seem that the two are completely different. But underneath it all, Walter and Tarek are both good people with good hearts, drumming to the beat of the djembe.
I think Richard Jenkins’ performance is understated elegance, worthy of the Critics Choice Award and SAG Award for Best Male Actor nominations which he received. Haaz Sleiman’s performance is infectious and though it’s been a few weeks already since I’ve seen this movie, the character of Tarek is still fresh in my mind. He’s not bad looking either 
Though a bit of a tearjerker, I absolutely loved this movie. Two thumbs up!
Rating: 
This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews, Movies & Film, Netflix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
