Movie-The Visitor

The Visitor is the first of the Oscar nominated movies for me to see. Richard Jenkins is nominated as lead actor for his role in The Visitor.

The Visitor (2007) is a quiet movie. It is about isolation and loneliness, amidst many people. But despite that, it is really compelling. Richard Jenkins is the lead and he plays Walter Vale, an older college professor, who is going through the motions...in every aspect of his life. He is doing a reasonable imitation of living, but only just.

When he must leave his Connecticut university to present a paper in New York, he goes to an apartment he has kept there for years. And to his surprise, finds a couple living in it. And maybe more surprising, this couple, him from Syria and she from Senegal, both illegal aliens, give him what we intimate is his only real human connections in years.

Yes, Walter becomes friends with them, slowly, as if using a tool he has not touched for years, he learns again how to converse, how to be with people. It is almost like seeing the tin woodsman getting oil and being able to move again.

The story line contains some twists, but is always spare, and is Jenkins take on Vale. He plays the character amazingly! Nuanced and stripped down, Walter is on knife's edge to being an automaton, and instead starts to feel and see and learn.

The Visitor is a very good movie, and all four main actors are very good, but Richard Jenkins did a great job. From what I have heard he is a long shot to get the award, but he was perfect in this role.