Sundance: Visitors and Fascists

On the first full day of the fest, I saw what could well end up a favorite of the event, The Visitor, written and directed by Thomas McCarthy. His previous film, The Station Agent, was—as others have said—completely in love with its characters, and the same is true of The Visitor, but the stakes are significantly higher this time. Character actor Richard Jenkins, a face you’ll recognize immediately even if you don’t know the name (he’s the father in Six Feet Under), plays a professor who, now that he’s a widower, seems less interested in his academic work and more interested in finding something else in life. Maybe he’ll learn to play the piano. Or spend more time in New York City. To reveal where the story goes robs it of some of its beauty; it’s about a late bloomer, about good people working through difficult problems, about finding people you love, and about immigration. Like a title by the Dardennes, the title of the film shifts its object intriguingly from scene to scene, and McCarthy’s sensitivity to class and culture is worthy of the same Belgian masters. It’s a quiet, rich, and rewarding tale, with a wonderfully restrained performance by Jenkins. (Watch for a limited release in mid-April. Josh saw it at Toronto liked it, too.)

I can’t say anything so enthusiastic about The Wave, a stylish and attractive-looking German film that ostensibly demonstrates how easily we can all embrace autocracy. In an ill-conceived object lesson, the cool teacher at a suburban high school manages to whip his class into a gang of fascist punks in a mere two days, and I haven’t seen a piece of German self-examination this simple-minded since The Lives of Others, which, even with its tenuous grasp on the craft of storytelling, seems like a deep-think piece by comparison.