Surreelfilm

Yesterday, I was traveling by air to my new school in Beppu, Japan. As a big chunk of that journey I got to spend about twelve and a half hours squeezed inside an economy class seat on a direct flight from Chicago O'Hare to Tokyo Narita. If any of you have been on one of those flights before then you know that the only things to do are watch movies, try to sleep, and get up and stretch every once and a while. Well, sleeping proved to be a futile attempt, and as the guy sitting next to me was apparently afflicted by some form of African sleeping sickness, (he slept for eleven hours of the flight) I didn't get to get up that often either. So, that left movies. Twelve and a half hours worth.

United's wonderful roster of in fight movies included Leatherheads, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and The Visitor. As you can imagine, I spent a lot of time listening to my Ipod. However, I had never seen The Visitor, so I decided to give it a fair shake. Here's what I thought.


The Skinny: The Visitor is a Canadian film that made it's debut at TIFF 2007. It features actor Richard Jenkins in his typical role as a successful but fundamentally unhappy middle-aged man, (See Burn After Reading) this time as college economics professor Walter Vale. Upon returning to his seldom-used New York City apartment for an economics conference, he finds two Senegalese illegal immigrants, husband and wife, who are squatting in his place. At first he kicks them out, but ultimately allows them to stay and forms a strong friendship with the husband Tarek, who begins to teach Walter how to play the African drums. When Tarek is arrested by immigration officials, Walter's commitment to the the couple is put to the test. The movie has all the markings of a hearfelt independent drama, but somehow it comes out feeling a little derivative. Ultimately, it's the conveniences of the plot that serve to make the film less believable. As the Japanese man two seats down from me put it, "Why the hell didn't he just kick those people out of the his house? Also, why would he want to start playing drums in the park like a hobo?" I think that about sums it up. Yes, it's fairly entertaining, but no, I don't think I would neccessarily seek it out if I wasn't trapped in a plane for twelve hours.

More news from Japan as it comes.