| Average Customer Rating: |  4.5 |
| Release Date: | 2008-10-07 |
| Publisher: | ANCHOR BAY |
| Actors: | Richard Jenkins; Hazz Sleiman; Hiam Abbas |
| Aspect ratio: | 1.33:1 |
| Audience rating: | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) |
| Format: | Anamorphic; Color; Dolby; DVD-Video; HiFi Sound; Surround Sound; THX; Widescreen; NTSC |
| Language: | Original Language: English; |
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Product description
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Hailed as "one of the year's most intriguing dramas" (Claudia Puig, USA TODAY), The Visitor stars Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) in a perfect performance (Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) as Walter, a disaffected college professor who has been drifting aimlessly through his life. When, in a chance encounter on a trip into New York, Walter discovers a couple has taken up residence in his apartment in the city, he develops an unexpected and profound connection to them that will change his life forever. As challenges arise for his tenants, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friends, and rediscovers a passion he thought he had lost long ago. The year's first genuine must-see film" (Ann Hornaday, THE WASHINGTON POST) about rediscovering life's rhythms in the most unexpected places
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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
Stills from The Visitor (click for larger image) Beyond The Visitor 
On Blu-ray | 
Soundtrack CD | 
Also directed by Tom McCarthy |
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Customer reviews
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A good art house movie, but not for repeated viewing
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There are two kinds of good movies: the kind you want to watch multiple times, and the kind that you will be glad that you saw once. For me, this is the latter type. The movie functions in two ways. First, it is a political statement about immigration policy. The main plot of the movie involves a good person who is well-integrated into American society after having lived here for many years. However, his family over-stayed a visa without responding to a legal notice many years earlier. Moreover, he is Middle Eastern, which introduces a variety of modern political issues. He is detained by the police by mistake, arrested and deported to a country he hasn't seen since he was a child, and where he knows nobody. If you support open borders, you will cheer the criticism of a Kafkaesque legal system that makes a mockery of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. If you support restrictive immigration policy, you will be offended by a sympathetic portrayal of someone who is actually a criminal.
However, the film works on another level as well. While the story centers around immigration policy, it is told from the perspective of an Economics professor whose life becomes entangled with the deported Middle Easterner. More than anything, the movie is a character study of that professor, who goes convincingly from being a rather pathetic and self-involved person to someone who actually starts to care about other people and finds some joy in his own life through African drumming. Yes, an Econ. professor becomes obsessed with African drumming. It is rather amusing how seriously the movie takes this given the conceptual absurdity (if you know any Econ. professors personally). However, the movie does make you care about a man who seems completely unsympathetic at the beginning of the movie.
While this is a very good movie, it is not the type that lends itself to repeated viewing. The kinds of movies I can watch multiple times are either visually interesting, or have great dialogue. There is little of visual interest here (aside from the absurdity of a middle-aged Econ. professor in a drum circle), and the dialogue, while realistic, is not engrossing for its own sake. If you can watch subtle character studies over and over again, you might find this one appropriate for repeated viewing, but most of the art house movie crowd will appreciate seeing this once and only once.
Rating: 
(4
out of 5) @ 2008-11-19
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Finding friends in unlikely places.
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I was eager to see this movie. It was written and directed by the man who both wrote and directed a movie that I really enjoy: The Station Agent. Both movies feature a theme of a solitary man finding friends in the least likely of circumstances.
Richard Jenkins plays the protagonist in The Visitor and, while it is not the most dynamic role, he was great. It was not his performance, however, that should get you to see this movie. Haaz Sleiman may be a one-hit wonder, but I hope not. He is Tarek, the illegal immigrant that Jenkins's character finds living in his apartment in New York City. He is tremendously charismatic.
This is not the fastest-paced movie. Please be patient, this movie is worth your time.
Rating: 
(5
out of 5) @ 2008-11-18
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In a World of Six Billion People, it Only Takes One to Change Your Life
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At the start of The Visitor, Richard Jenkins (Cheaper by the Dozen) is your typical burned out professor who just white outs the term and year on the syllabus, and only if he remembers. Criticism isn't his strong suit either as he has been through five piano teachers without a second lesson. Just your typical mid life crisis, but about ten years after he should have grown out of it.
All that changes when he has to go to a conference in New York City and a couple has taken up residence in his apartment there in his absence. Instead of calling the police like a normal person, Jenkins, longing for some human contact out of the norm and let the two Muslims stay. In Haaz Sleiman (American Dreamz), Jenkins finds a teacher that doesn't just dismiss him learning the djembe (a Syrian drum) at such an old age.
This first half of the film is as exhilarating as Jenkins taking up the foreign instrument with plenty of great music that moves the movie along. But not surprising considering the origins of the house guests, the second half delves into a heavy handed commentary on the immigration policies in a post-9/11 world. Even during the first half, you know it is coming, but you wish they would have just stayed with the uplifting story of bring people together with music.
Rating:
(4
out of 5) @ 2008-11-18
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A movie to remind us that we all come from somewhere
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Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), an insular, lonely economics professor at an upscale Connecticut college, is tapped by his superiors to present a paper at a conference in New York City, though he resists as strongly as he is able. He very reluctantly complies, only to find himself jarred out of his complacent misery when he arrives in New York by finding squatters in the apartment he has maintained for many years. The pair, a Senegalese woman (Danai Gurira) and her Syrian boyfriend (Haaz Sleiman),both illegal aliens, have sublet the apartment from a total stranger. Walter's reaction, after a great deal of thought, is to take them in until they can find suitable lodgings. The movie progresses deceptively slowly...you imagine more time has passed than actually happens...and the relationship between the three evolves naturally and believeably. Tarek, the man from Syria, takes an instant liking to his benefactor and when Walter exhibits an interest in Tarek's talent (playing the djembe, an African drum), Tarek turns Walter into the most incongruous member of a drum circle in Central Park. Only Zaineb, the Senegalese woman, shows real wariness; she's been involved in troubles to do with immigration before, and she doesn't totally trust Walter for a long time, until circumstances force her to admit that Walter has a true friendship for both of his impromptu lodgers. Very few movies in the past few years have brought me to tears, but this movie is so beautifully wrought and staged, with unsurpassed acting from everyone involved, that I cannot recommend it highly enough. It will touch your heart in ways that you did not think possible.
Rating:
(5
out of 5) @ 2008-11-17
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Poignant
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A friend said this was a wonderful movie and thought I would also enjoy it. Lovely sweet and sad story of a man who unexpectedly finds himself involved in the lives of strangers.
Rating:
(4
out of 5) @ 2008-11-16
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