‘The Visitor’ Works Out America’s Demons Following Sept. 11, 2001

HollywoodChicago.com — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:53:02 -0600

CHICAGO – “The Visitor” is a subtle film. Created by the unique talent of writer and director Thomas McCarthy – who also generated the equally subtle world of “The Station Agent” – this new work explores the nature of who belongs where.

It’s outside the artificial borders of countries and city states and more toward the intuitive virtues of the emotional state that bonds us to each other.

Danai Jekesai Gurira in “The Visitor”.
Photo credit: Overture Films

Richard Jenkins – best known as the recurring dead father on “Six Feet Under” – plays the role of a lifetime as Walter Vale: a burnt-out professor of economics at a Connecticut university.

His wife – a reputable concert pianist – has recently died. The emptiness of the new circumstance is etched upon his soul. Forced to attend a conference in New York City, Walter opens up an apartment he owns there only to find squatters living inside.

Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) is an illegal immigrant from Syria and his girlfriend, Esi (Danai Jekesai Gurira), is an African with similar status. They have “rented” the apartment from someone who conned them into the place.

Walter lets them stay until they can find new lodgings. He discovers that Tarek is a jazz drummer (of the single African drum variety) and is curious to learn new drumming techniques. When Walter begins to absorb the rhythm lessons from Tarek, a bond develops.

Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”.
Photo credit: Overture Films

Walter is even with Tarek as he is stopped in the subway and hauled away by immigration authorities to a warehouse prison. This begins a Franz Kafka-like nightmare of epic proportions as the post-Sept. 11, 2001 world punishes the illegals with impunity.

Walter suddenly finds himself entrenched within and between the passion of Tarek’s mother to seek her son’s freedom versus the laws and officials of the immigration system.

This also serves to release the professor’s own repressed feelings as a life spark he thought was buried begins to emerge again. McCarthy brilliantly focuses on characters who love life despite the less savory circumstances surrounding them.

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Like Bobby Cannavale’s memorable best-friend persona in “The Station Agent,” Tarek is also an eternal optimist who passes along his happy state to Walter through the beats of a simple drum.

There is poignancy to be felt throughout this process especially when the immigration prison finally punctures Tarek’s unyielding sunniness.

Jenkins makes the most of his first leading male role. He carefully nurtures Walter throughout the darkness to light materialization while always staying realistically within the bounds of his inner professorial approach to existence.

The understated change of eyeglasses, his sudden frustrated outburst at the prison and his admiration for the courage of Tarek’s mother are all keenly realized. There is complete empathy for Walter because of Jenkin’s acute portrayal.

This film is America working out the demons of Sept. 11, 2001. It’s time to bang the drum.

“The Visitor” opened on April 18, 2008.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

‘The Kingdom’ a Prescient Portrayal of Relentless Ghost in the Terrorist Machine

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:37:09 -0600

CHICAGO – In 1967, author Arthur Koestler wrote the non-fiction book “The Ghost in the Machine”.

The title has come full circle with Friday’s release of “The Kingdom” whereby the ghost – an Osama bin Laden-like extremist – must be extricated from his clandestine machine of terrorists.

From left to right, Jason Bateman, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer
Garner, Ashraf Barhom and Chris Cooper in “The Kingdom”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Even if you could smoke out the ghost in the machine, the most disquieting concept of such a search-and-destroy mission is much like what happens with the mythical Hydra creature. When Heracles decapitated one of the monster’s heads, another grew right back in its place.

Such can be said about today’s terrorist leaders. Even when offing a big fish, the mere action itself fanatically rouses another to rise in his place.

In “The Kingdom,” which can be thought of as the anti-“Syriana,” wild-man director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “The Rundown”) touches with grave timeliness on modern-day fears through excellently evocative histrionics and relatively accurate portrayals of the abomination that is life and war in Saudi Arabia.

Jennifer Garner in “The Kingdom”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Following blood-splattering carnage in broad daylight, FBI agents Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman are surreptitiously dispatched from the U.S. to the scene in Riyadh to recreate the chaos and punish the executioners.

Life there – with several American families dangerously trying to live in local harmony – is a perplexing and ferocious wake-up call for many of us who lead relatively normal American lives.

The film was actually shot in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates along with at Arizona State University; in Phoenix; in Mesa, Ariz.; and in Washington, D.C.
As you could imagine, diplomats are hamstrung with slow debates of territorialism. The FBI agents quickly learn that Saudi authorities are leery and unwelcoming of American interlopers into what they consider a local matter.

Jamie Foxx in “The Kingdom”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
They nonetheless permit them local access, impart as much safe passage as possible and work as a team to bridge two innately dissimilar cultures.

Foxx gets the decoration for this film’s best acting, Cooper loves to get down and dirty and makes you appreciate him for it, Garner feels fragile for her surroundings until Berg grants her one hardcore whoop-ass scene and Bateman is unfortunately cast as an attempted funny man who the film seriously could have done without.

Richard Jenkins, who plays the FBI’s director, felt exactly where he should be and likely equaled the performance that would have been handed over by Robert De Niro before he decided not to accept the role. Chicago’s Jeremy Piven was purely obnoxious and should have sported the dunce hat along with Bateman.

Jennifer Garner in “The Kingdom”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Don’t be fooled by Danny Elfman’s beautiful score. For Berg’s cast and crew – much like in “A Mighty Heart” about the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan – filming with intense sequences of brutal violence often wasn’t safe overseas and even in the U.S.
During filming on Aug. 12, 2006, assistant property master Nick Papac was killed in Mesa, Ariz. after the all-terrain vehicle he was driving crashed into Berg’s SUV. On set in Phoenix, Garner collapsed twice due to the sweltering, 115-degree heat.

While some films launch us into fictitious fantasy worlds, we also escape reality into film to glimpse an even truer reality that’s deep within chasms we could never reach.

The geopolitical thriller that is “The Kingdom” makes an important statement about our political relations with that country while vitally illuminating how and why terrorists become who they are.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com