The Visitor (Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haas Sleiman) — In my years of movie mavenhood, I have made a special effort to note career character actors, the mainstays of the movie business. These are people who appear in dozens of films, never for a big paycheck, but are so good at being supporting cast members that they both make a good living and get steady work. They are the actors whose faces you always remember and sometimes can place, but whom you have no recall of their names. My favorites include J.T. Walsh, James Rebhorn, James Cromwell, Sydney Pollack (recently deceased and most known for directing), Ed Lauter, Bonnie Hunt, Holland Taylor, Bob Gunton and Richard Jenkins. Most of the time, they either play bad guys, best friends or plot-moving sidekicks. The Visitor puts Jenkins front and center in what I hope is an Academy Award-nominated performance. He plays Walter Vale, a small-college, tenured professor whose life has been empty since his wife, an
accomplished pianist died. He goes through the motions of teaching a course and writing another tedious book but he is really as dead as she. To compensate, he tries learning piano — presumably to remain close to her — but his heart is not in it. Sent to New York City to present a paper that he co-authored but had little to do with, he returns to the apartment he and his wife often enjoyed but he never got around to discarding. To his surprise, he finds a couple — illegal immigrants both — living there (they were duped into it). The rest of the story is rich, engaging, maddening and heart-breaking.
Jenkins’ multi-layered performance takes his character-acting experiences to a pitch-perfect level as he moves emotionally from comatose to angry to loving to free. While the film has done less than $4 million in box office, it is easily the best independent film I have seen this year and probably the best movie period. If you can find it, please see it.