The Visitor: A Glimpse of Post 9/11 America

The Visitor is ostensibly a movie about the transformative power of a chance meeting between two very different individuals. Yet within this universal tale, the director, Tom McCarthy, also exposes the corrosive effects of the post 9/11 paranoia on certain aspects of American society. In this land of immigrants, empathy and fairness towards (most) immigrants has been replaced by cold antipathy and a place where fear, no matter how illogical, trumps human and civil rights as well as common decency. This hardening of attitudes is most palpably felt by those of the "wrong" faith or ethnicity.

Walter is an Anglo-Saxon, middle-aged college professor of global economics. He is the prototype of an American with a privileged existence. He is also a widower who is bored with the monotony of his life and work. On a trip to New York City for work, he finds Tarek, a young Syrian musician and Zeinab, his Senegalese girlfriend living in his apartment, rented to them illegally by a swindler. They apologize and get set to leave when Walter offers to let them stay until they can find a place of their own. During that time Walter befriends Tarek who teaches him to play the African drum. A failed piano player, Walter is taken by the joyful rhythm of the African drum.

When Tarek is arrested by overzealous transit cops and disappears into the bowels of the Kafkaesque post 9/11 privately run security detention facilities, Walter is introduced to a world from which he, as a privileged white native-born American, he was completely unaware of. Walter hires a lawyer to help Tarek. Within days, Tarek's mother, unable to reach him by phone, arrives at the door of Walter's apartment from Michigan. As they both seek Tarek's release, a romantic bond develops between the two. You will have to see the movie for the rest of the story.

This is a gem of a movie. There is nothing Hollywood about it. It is a human story, beautifully told in a slow, deliberate and realistic way. Closeup shots of the actors reveal every wrinkle on their faces making them all the more expressive. Best of all, the movie is, thankfully, free of Arab Hollywood stereotypes.

The acting is exceptional especially by the beautiful Palestinian actress Hiam Abbas (The Syrian Bride) who played Tarek's mother and Richard Jenkins who played Walter.