Music Hath Charms …
by B.L.C.
A movie about learning to play the bongo drums? No, not exactly, but the instrument does play a major role in the mid-life crisis of The Visitor, the ironically titled film about a Connecticut college professor, who comes back to New York after a long absence to deliver a paper at a conference and discovers people living in his paid-for apartment. They are two undocumented immigrants, a young Syrian drummer and a Senegalese woman who sells her handcrafted jewelry on the streets to make a living. Her newly found boyfriend doesn’t have a job, we find out, and spends most of his time playing the bongo drum in the parks with other drummers. The apartment was obtained through some fellow named Ivan. Walter Vale, our unwitting hero of a sort, after ordering them out, then relents, allowing them to stay there indefinitely.
And so this story about a semi-depressed widower, whose wife was a concert pianist, begins in earnest. The message of this film appears to be that people in Walter’s position learn rather late in life that just going through the motions can be as static as a wall of societal separation. Functioning in an insulated environment like academia only leads to apathy, especially after the death of a wife. It is not abnormal for one who has suffered such a loss to suppress one’s grief. So to keep her alive in his mind, perhaps, Walter tries to play the piano, but it is obvious he has ten left thumbs. It takes an honest piano teacher, his “fifth or sixth,” to convince him of that. But there must be music somewhere in his soul. It is only when he develops a relationship with Tarek, the drummer, that Walter begins to come back to the world of the living. Unfortunately that world is also the world of stark reality, far from the sedate college campus. The current reality is clearly the post 9/11 mood that has turned into pervasive paranoia, and the atmosphere created soon swallows up Tarek. He is arrested – in the subway, in Walter’s presence, no less.
The scenes that follow are dismaying. Walter is no longer the passive college professor; he vainly seeks a lawyer to extricate Tarek, pays him visits at a detention center in Queens, and finally blows his top when told Tarek has been moved to another center and that “no further information is available.” The government has now become a cold monster. Walter shows some genuine tenderness toward Tarek’s mother who has come to New York. But just when it appears a relationship is developing, she suddenly decides to return to Michigan and accept her son’s fate. Another mystery.
Walter cannot let Tarek disappear from his mind. We now see him bringing his bongo drum into the subway, setting himself up on a bench and performing a fairly advanced solo. He has learned well from a most unacademic teacher. Yes, music does have charms.
This is really a film about the America of today, and it is loaded with political implications. But that could lead to problems. Director-writer Tom McCarthy, in order to keep the narrative on track (no pun intended) and, perhaps, to fashion a metaphor, does not bother with the fine details of Tarek’s arrest in the subway. We are left to wonder. Agents are out there, to be sure, but it is still hard to believe that a young man with Mideastern features would just get picked up in New York for that alone. There are thousands of New Yorkers with such features, and the fact that he was arrested alongside an older, obviously non-Arab gentleman makes the arrest scene more than just a bit of a stretch. Walter is told, “Stay out of this or we’ll arrest you too.” (Suppose they did; well, one supposes that would have led to a different film.) Another director-writer might have chosen an arrest scene made right in Walter’s apartment. A common procedure these days is catching an illegal immigrant in the act of securing an unauthorized green card. The role of the mysterious Ivan, who serviced Tarek in finding an apartment, could be turned into a squealer. An undercover agent could pose as the card carrier and make the arrest, with backup right outside the door.
But one has to give credit to McCarthy for taking risks. It is true that the device of mystery, of leaving much of the thoughts in the minds of the characters unsaid, works to the benefit of this deceptively unpretentious film. At least in the case of Walter, who appears inarticulate for much of the film, one need only size up his body language, which Richard Jenkins (famous for his role on HBO’s ”Six Feet Under”) is very adept at. Anyone who thinks it’s easy to portray a character running on empty ought to see this film just for that performance alone. His conversion into a caring human being is guarded, and that only makes his outburst at the detention center that much more believable and very, very familiar to anyone who knows what happens when we see our freedoms and our rights suddenly disappear behind bureaucratic walls. And the performance by Haaz Sleiman as the outgoing Tarek is utterly heart-wrenching, as he tries to come to terms with his encounter with the unexpected side of America. His disappearance is also part of the mystery, for we can never know what happens to him. Guantanamo?
The parts of Mouna (mother) and Zainab (girlfriend) are played well by Hiam Abbass, noted Arab-Israeli actress, and Danai Gurira. The familiar Marian Seldes is perfect in a cameo as a seasoned piano teacher, who in the end buys Walter’s piano to symbolically(?) sever his wife’s hold on his consciousness.
Highly recommended.
