The Visitor

It has long been acknowledged that there is barely such a thing as a real indie movie anymore. Most so-called indie movies are actually financed by specialist arms of major studios or by companies that are ultimately owned by the same corporations as the major studios. If a movie is made independently, it is almost always picked up for distribution by a major. So it seems the term indie is used more as a reference to style/genre/ethos than to a specific financial category. As with any style/genre (we use the term loosely here since it probably doesn't strictly fit the bill) there are formulas and audience expectations that make them feel predictable. This is particularly true of the character-based 'life-affirming' indie as opposed to the low-budget guns and gangsters kind. There's definitely a creeping sense among audiences that we've seen it all before.

It's into this difficult climate that Tom McCarthy's sophomore film The Visitor emerges. McCarthy's is an actor turned director whose debut film The Station Agent was a small, charming gem that deservedly garnered critical acclaim on the festival circuit and arguably added to the template of 'typical indie fare'.

The Visitor is about a lonely college professor who has effectively resigned from life until he finds 2 immigrants squatting in his apartment. The trio become unlikely friends and life lessons are learned, passion for life is re-ignited, residual grief over dead relatives is surmounted, romance is hinted at, but never overtly expedited (nothing so crass!) and credits role amid much ambiguity.

All this is fine and works extremely well in many indie films, in much the same way as a thriller can be formulaic but gripping if it's treated right. As mentioned The Station Agent is so full of easy-going charm that it succeeds brilliantly within this formula. The Visitor however, is a more difficult beast, to be admired for certain reasons and to be given the cold shoulder for others.

What makes this admirable and unusual for a character-based indie movie is its political edge and it's acute sense of anger at the treatment of asylum seekers. It manages to tackle an issue, if not quite head on, then through the indirect prism of the characters' worlds and is all the better for this angle of exploration. It doesn't feel preachy. It doesn't seek to inform but rather to explore and help find understanding.

That said, this causes some associated problems. The film can never quite decide if this is a story about a man rekindling his zest for life or whether it's a story about a man finding his passion through anger and a sense of righteous indignation. It seems the latter scenario would be fresh and interesting for a film of this type (or for any film for that matter - as Jonny Rotten said; anger is an energy - one too often ignored). Instead, what happens is that the zest-for-life moments sit a little incongruously in such a sombre, morose piece with the result that they feel shoehorned in and stick out as what they are, boring staples of the 'genre'.

It seems a strange criticism to level at a movie but this wasn't as enjoyable and entertaining as The Station Agent quite simply because it lacked that movie's charm. Yet it fails to break new ground and be an unusual example of the form, in that it tries too hard to have charm. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. It's still a damned good effort and worth a look.

3/5