Admiral Theatre hosts ‘one of the most human movies you’re likely to see all year’ tonight.
The crux of thoughts generated by this flick seem to be fixed on its undeniable, even at times overwhelming, humanity.
Critics from all over have weighed in, hitting consistently on the films’ ability to evoke the poignant realities of post 9/11 America, without preaching, just presenting.
It debuted on last spring’s film festival circuit.
The Admiral Theatre screens it tonight in Bremerton, as part of its ongoing monthly film series. “One of the most recognizably human movies you’re likely to see all year,” one critic described this month’s film, Tom McCarthy’s “The Visitor.”
It’s the actor/filmmaker’s follow up to an award-winning directorial debut, “The Station Agent.”
In another story framed by solitude and the ironic, and ever-so powerful bonds created by it, “The Visitor” begins with a lonely, old widower, Walter Vale.
Played by the subtly stunning Richard Jenkins, Vale, a 60-ish bespectacled East Coast college professor, has lost his wife and his fervor for nearly all the things in life that were once his passions.
He’s sleepwalking through life, pretending to be busy so he won’t have time to feel lonely. In a futile attempt to fill the void, he takes up classical piano, his late wife’s passion.
But it isn’t until he sees the world through another’s eyes that he finds himself.
Forced by his college to attend a conference in Manhattan, Vale reluctantly returns to the abandoned apartment he and his wife once shared in the city only to find a pair of strangers who have taken of residence in his absence.
Not burglars, nor squatters, the couple are victims of a real estate scam. They’re also undocumented citizens.
Tarek, a young musician of Syrian descent, came to America with his mother as a boy but was never documented. Zainab, Tarek’s girlfriend, a young artist from Senegal, is making ends meet in America by selling her jewelry on the street.
Vale finds an uncharacteristic soft spot in his heart for the two and opens his apartment to them.
And in return, they open up a whole new world for the old man when Tarek teaches him the art of African drumming.
But the plot thickens when Tarek is wrongfully arrested in the subway and swept into the confusing and skewed post-9/11 bureaucratic system.
‘THE VISITOR’ will be showing for one night only, 7 p.m. tonight, Feb. 6 at the Admiral Theatre, 515 Pacific Ave. in Bremerton. Tickets are $7. Info: www.thevisitorfilm.com, www.admiraltheatre.org or call (360) 373-6743.
