 |
REVIEWS
Richard Jenkins and "The Visitor" make lovely music together. It's a case of a veteran character actor slipping on a leading role like the most comfortable pair of pants in the world.
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
This is a film of our times -- paranoid, heartbroken, disillusioned -- and the rare recent American movie whose characters react the way actual people might.
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
The script here is very strong.
Richard Roeper
Ebert & Roeper
|
Wednesday September 17th, 2008 @ Galaxy Theatre
Connection is everything
 In a world of six billion people, it only takes one to change your life. In actor and filmmaker Tom McCarthy’s follow-up to his award winning directorial debut The Station Agent, Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) stars as a disillusioned Connecticut economics professor whose life is transformed by a chance encounter in New York City.
Sixty-two-year-old Walter Vale (Jenkins) is sleepwalking through his life. Having lost his passion for teaching and writing, he fills the void by unsuccessfully trying to learn to play classical piano. When his college sends him to Manhattan to attend a conference, Walter is surprised to find a young couple has taken up residence in his apartment. Victims of a real estate scam, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Syrian man, and Zainab (Danai Gurira), his Senegalese girlfriend, have nowhere else to go. In the first of a series of tests of the heart, Walter reluctantly allows the couple to stay with him.
Touched by his kindness, Tarek, a talented musician, insists on teaching the aging academic to play the African drum. The instrument’s exuberant rhythms revitalize Walter’s faltering spirit and open his eyes to a vibrant world of local jazz clubs and Central Park drum circles. As the friendship between the two men deepens, the differences in culture, age and temperament fall away.
After being stopped by police in the subway, Tarek is arrested as an undocumented citizen and held for deportation. As his situation turns desperate, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friend with a passion he thought he had long ago lost. When Tarek’s beautiful mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass) arrives unexpectedly in search of her son, the professor’s personal commitment develops into an unlikely romance.
And it’s through these new found connections with these virtual strangers that Walter is awakened to a new world and a new life.
--© Overture Films
Cast
Richard Jenkins
Hiam Abbass
Haaz Sleiman
Danai Gurira
Crew
Director: Tom McCarthy
Screenwriter: Tom McCarthy
Producer: Mary Jane Skalski, Michael London
Composer: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 1hr 43 min.
Print This Page | Contact Aultsville Theatre
|
|
