Years ago there was a movie named “Marty” that turned an actor who had always played the heavy into an Oscar winner. That would be Ernest Borgnine and the year was 1955. Marty was Joe Blow, an unattractive butcher from Brooklyn living with his mother with no prospects of an interesting life, still less for a good marriage. Borgnine made the ugly butcher a character to be remembered; it was the star performance of his long career. I thought of “Marty” when I saw “The Visitor,” which similarly seems to be elevating another character actor, Richard Jenkins, to a new level of performance, indeed, several film critics have put him on their list for a Best Actor Award. I was familiar with Jenkins largely through HBO’s series “Six Feet Under,” in which he played the father of the oddball family that ran a California Funeral Home, although I know I have seen him in a slew of movies as a secondary character. “The Visitor” is sleeper of a movie, and so is Jenkins performance as a widowed professor, Walter Vale, who has lost his zest for life. Who knew Jenkins had it in him? I suspect the writer and director, Thomas McCarthy deserves a lot of credit for, first of all, having the confidence in him as an actor, and secondly, he probably helped coax him along as director. Walter is a man who has lost his way and goes through the motions of his academic career at a Connecticut college, but his heart and soul are no longer in it. Clinically speaking, you’d say he was depressed. But them he meets some squatters who have been living in an apartment he maintains in New York City. It is man named Tarek from Syria, a musician, and his girl friend, Zainab from Senegal. They are both illegal aliens and have limited options, so, feeling sorry for their plight, he lets them stay in his apartment. They become friends and then Tarek, as a gesture of appreciation, teaches the professor to play the African drums, which he eventually becomes proficient at, good enough to play with street musicians in the Central Park. But then there is trouble with Immigration authorities, with the Syrian being arrested. The multicultural context increases when the Tarek’s mother arrives from Detroit and she stays with the professor. They become close and have a quite touching relationship. In any event, the three foreigners help the stifled professor crawl out of his withered state, and his transformation into an active and expressive member of the human race is a joy to watch happen.
“The Lazarus Project” is, so to speak, Dead Man Walking, or maybe not. It stars Paul Walker, from “Fast and Furious” fame, a lean, handsome young man who is Ben Garvey, an ex-con with a family and a good job at a brewery. His criminal past is behind him and things are looking up. But then his employers find out about his past and dismiss him, which encourages him to make another bad decision. His brother shows up and talks him into a sure bet of a robbery, which of course goes haywire, and his brother and a guard are killed. In Texas any participant in a capital crime can be executed, as if they pulled the trigger. We see Ben pin down on a gurney, which is shaped like a cross, receiving the death-dealing chemicals. And like Christ he seems to be reborn, for in the very next scene we see Ben walking down a country road in a rainstorm. He is on his way to a job as groundskeeper at a Psychiatric Hospital in the boonies. A priest driving a old truck picks him up; he turns out to be the man in charge where he is going to work. Ben doesn’t know why he is there and how he got there; and he is tormented by memories of being on the gurney and of his longing for his wife and little girl. Strange things begin to happen. When he tries to leave a ‘Guardian Angel’ shows up to persuade him to stay because “death is looking for you out there.” He has dealings with two inmates and a woman who works there, and he has persistent feelings that he is being watched. Being troubled and confused, the priest tells him his family is dead and he caused their death by smoking in bed, and at the heart of his trauma is guilt. He doesn’t believe it but can’t prove it. The plot is a maze of deception and misdirection; much is never explained. At the center of the plot is a wrongheaded experiment that is one man’s idea of what rehabilitation means. There are gaps in the story and the ending is much too soft, but there is enough mystery to keep you wondering what was going to happen next.
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