The Visitor review

 Number 589 on the top 1000 films of all time is Tom McCarthy's 2007 drama 'The Visitor.'

Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a widowed academic living a lonely life in Connecticut. Upon his arrival in his New York flat, he meets an immigrant couple already living there - the Syrian Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and the Senegalese Zainab (Danai Gurira) and he forms an unlikely friendship with them.

This film completely flew under my radar. If it hadn't been for this list, I would never have heard of it, but it really surprised me. It was an understated, touching, but powerful story of human communication and connection.

It helped having Richard Jenkins at the helm. he really brought a lot of vulnerability and humanity to the role. It would have been all too easy to have portrayed Walter Vale, as a bitter, old recluse - like Jack Nicholson in as Good as it Gets, but instead he was a lonely old man, living an unsatisfactory existence. It is through his friendship with Tarek and Zainab that he starts to enjoy life again. No wonder that Jenkins received an Oscar nod for this film.

Nowhere is this more present than through the theme of music. The film begins with Jenkins trying and failing to learn the piano. He later bonds with Tarek when the latter teaches him how to play the Djembe - a West African goblet drum. The two even play together in Central Park.

Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira were very good as Tarek and Zainab. Tarek's optimism made him charismatic and likeable whereas Zainab's initial distrust and hostility made her realistic. They had good chemistry together and they worked well with Walter Vale. Initially Zainab distrusts Walter, but over time the two become closer.

I think that a film like the Visitor could have fallen into so many pitfalls, but McCarthy navigated all these with ease. Despite the film focussing on the immigrant experience in the US, it is never preachy or condescending. McCarthy told a nicely well-rounded story that gave a three-dimensional aspect to the conversation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the relationship between Walter and Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass.) After he is arrested, she comes to New York to help him. In the process, he forms a close relationship with Walter. In the hands of a lesser director, their platonic relationship could have become romantic or even sexual. Thank god, that did not happen. Although the two share plenty of intimate moments, they are not sexual in nature. There were hints of a romantic interest between the two, but nothing more than that. Not that it was necessary. Their relationship was wonderfully understated.

The Visitor also lacked your classic Hollywood happy ever after ending, which made things even the more bittersweet. Instead things were sad, sobre but also painfully realistic.

As was the film. The Visitor came out of nowhere, but it surprised me in the process. This is definitely a film I could watch over and over again.