Of all the men nominated for Best Actor at the recent Academy Awards ceremony, the one least likely to go home with Oscar was probably Richard Jenkins. A beloved character actor, best known recently for his role as Nathaniel Fisher on Six Feet Under, Jenkins had never had a leading role in a film before. But writer-director Thomas McCarthy created The Visitor specifically with Jenkins in mind, and gave him the role of a lifetime.
Jenkins plays widowed professor Walter Vale. He lives and teaches full time in Connecticut, but has a rarely-used apartment in New York City. Returning to Manhattan to deliver a paper at a conference, he finds that a dishonest building superintendent (presumably, it’s never made quite clear) has rented his apartment to Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira), a Muslim couple who are in the country illegally.
The Visitor: Stock Plot, Stock Characters
What happens next is familiar from far too many films: thanks to a socially-underprivileged but free-spirited person of colour, an uptight white person gets a new lease on life. Walter is a failed pianist, Tarek is a drummer. Tarek teaches Walter how to drum. Walter joins Tarek at a drum circle. Walter discovers joy again.
What elevates The Visitor beyond its clichéd plot is, firstly, that it’s set in a post-September 11th world. Tarek runs afoul of New York’s formidable subway cops and finds to his detriment that the “tired, [the] poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free” aren’t welcome if they don’t have a green card. Tarek and Zainab’s desperate situation is more moving seen in the light of the new political reality in the U.S. It's unclear what Tarek does for a living besides drum, but Zainab sells home-made jewelry and neither appears to be a drain on the system. The unfairness of it is infuriating.
Jenkins’ Performance Takes the Film Beyond the Familiar
The second element is Jenkins’s miraculous performance. It’s a kind of acting rarely recognized by awards-giving bodies, which tend to prefer showier roles. Jenkins fits so snugly in Walter’s skin that it’s hard to remember he’s acting at all. The look of joy on Walter’s face as he joins in with the drum circle is worth a hundred latex-covered movie stars.
Jenkins has only one false note in the whole film, during a scene at an immigrant detention centre when Walter lets his anger run away with him. Otherwise, his is a perfect little gem of a performance, in a near-perfect little gem of a film.
