The Visitor (2008)
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
7:00pm
Langdell North • Harvard Law School
1545 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge MA
A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college
professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair
of homeless, illegal aliens living in his New York apartment. After the
mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician
named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira--to
stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet
Vale and the vital Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond
to Tarek's drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated
has finally arrived. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration
authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam
Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewed if subdued
interest in courtship. But the wheels of injustice in immigration crush
all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes his
unexpected capacity for anger over Tarek's plight, and the positive
changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his
friend and Mouna, might be the only legacy he takes from this experience.
Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story
about change and renewal, and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a
largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has
surely come. --Tom Keogh
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
7:00pm
Langdell North • Harvard Law School
1545 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge MA
The Boston Palestine Film Festival -- 2008
Saturday, 10/4/08 - Sunday, 10/12/08
Trailer
www.BostonPalestineFilmFestival.org
