Undoubtedly one of the most moving films of the year, The Visitor also boasts a beautiful, subtle, emotionally triumphant performance from Richard Jenkins as a widower struggling to emerge from an overwhelming cloak of mourning to take his place back in the real world.
A movie that skilfully interweaves several strands to present a story built on kindness, hope and common humanity, it strikes out at America's paranoia and rampant xenophobia while presenting a grieving husband as an example of how someone can turn f
rom darkness back to the light.
Jenkins plays Walter Vale, a university lecturer lost within a lonely, directionless existence and trapped by grief after the death of his wife. He half-heartedly attempts to go on with his life but is fighting a losing battle with apathy and self-pity.
Travelling to New York to deliver a paper, he finds his apartment occupied by two foreigners: Tarek, a young Syrian and Zainab, his Senegalese girlfriend. Though at first he throws them out, Walter later relents and invites them to stay until they find alternative accommodation. It is the beginning of a friendship that will lead to Walter's rediscovery of what life still has to offer.
Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, the filmmaker behind The Station Agent, The Visitor is a pure character-driven drama that streams with heartache and frustration and uses the character of Walter as an indicator of how problems can be solved by friendship, trust and goodness.
I urge everyone to see it.
On staggered release
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