The Visitor (2008)

I admired THE VISITOR in the same way that I would admire a beautiful novel, moreso than a film. This is not meant as an insult, just a clarification. As filmmaking, THE VISITOR is a very quiet, subtle, and unpretentious work. And truly, what makes you say you enjoy the film is going to be the four main acting performances and the message of the story itself.
I found myself to be quite moved by Richard Jenkins' work here as an emotionally-frozen college professor who has clearly failed to recover from his wife's death. To keep her spirit alive, he attempts to learn to play the piano (an instrument on which she was a virtuoso). He sucks at it. He is also starting to suck at being a college professor, coldly rejecting late work from students without explanation and "updating" his course syllabi with whiteout to change the dates on it. The guy is checked out.
Checked out until music comes into his life again, or at least that's how I interpret it. You could say that this film is all about, as the tagline suggests, how it only takes one person on this planet of over six billion people to change your life. But what this one person, a stranger who was misled into a shady subletting deal that finds him and his girlfriend in the professor's rarely-occupied New York apartment, brings to Jenkins' character is music. It comes in the form of an African drum, and the moments involving the two men and the drum are rich with heartwarming, life-affirming symbolism and reminders of the healing power of music.
THE VISITOR has strong and liberal political overtones that some have found to be heavyhanded or the film's Achilles heel. I don't believe either of those things are true. Without giving too much away, I believe that, as the professor lets his emotional guard down and begins to build the new version of himself that is needed to carry on in the world, the politically-charged by-products of the film that the character encounters (which include racial profiling in a post-9/11 world and illegal immigration) are tests of his new-found open-mindedness.
What a wonderful little film THE VISITOR is!
It's by no means a perfect movie. It's sometimes slow. It sometimes lacks visual punch. But, as I said before, it stays with you like a good book. And as a music lover, I haven't seen anything lately that has so perfectly romanticized the power of music. For that reason alone, I'd watch this film again and recommend it to friends.

3.5 out of 4