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Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
Trying To Visit The Visitor Attempt Number One: rode College streetcar to the Carlton Cinema where, according to my interpretation of the NOW Magazine film listings, The Visitor was still playing for one more day. I have never been strong in the schedule-reading department. On the upside, this inept part of my brain has led to countless ‘ life adventures,’ many of them involving unintentional train rides and overnight stays in places as [seemingly] diverse as Calais, France and Hamilton, Ontario. On the downside, it means I rushed into the Carlton cinema only to face the grim truth that the film had closed the previous Thursday. Although I had really, really wanted to see The Visitor, a desire based solely on the mini-blurb description in the NOW magazine I had obviously forgotten how to read properly re movie times, I chose another movie and managed to stop pouting after ten or fifteen minutes. Besides, I had to focus my energies on keeping warm, since the theatre was clearly of the mind that moviegoers are a cold-blooded species. “Elegy” was interesting enough as films go. And if your goal on a given day is to plunge yourself into a peculiar, slushy mood after having bounced from bed in a relatively happy state, the Carlton Cinema on a rainy afternoon is always there for you.
I was still determined to see The Visitor and so was seriously delighted when the pay-per-view movie roster at the hotel featured this very flick. What could be better, I reasoned, than a day at the Royal Winter Fair followed by [at last!] a cozy screening of an appealing movie. But it was not to be, because while we were off enjoying the pigs and cows and goats and Superdogs, ‘something’ went wrong with the hotel’s movies-and-internet connection. Not one to sit staring at a blank screen while stubbornly punching buttons on a remote, I conceded to defeat. Perhaps I was being spared exposure to the worst film of my film-loving career. This I doubted, but what is a belief in Fate good for if not for pale reassurances in stupid situations?
It has been established that I enjoy cooking. And lately, what I REALLY love is cooking while listening to a podcast. It’s not really podcastination if you’re doing something else that’s useful at the same time, so...I’m quite hooked on a screenwriting podcast out of the States, and while other subscribed-to podcasts sometimes experience a back-log, I’m pretty religious about my attention to this one. “Today we’ll be talking to writer-director Thomas McCarthy,” shouts host of beloved show. “About his new movie, The Visitor.” I turn my eyes to the heavens and accuse the Fates of tormenting me where cold comfort had just recently enveloped me. But wait, the film is apparently available on DVD. Heart quickens with hope. Dinner preparations pause as I stand in the middle of the kitchen floor listening intently. Also the writer and director of another amazing film, The Station Agent. HOW did I not know this detail? The NOW blurb had not mentioned it: apparently the story summary alone was enough to intrigue me to the point of desperation. Also, when writing, I sometimes feel like one who has been under a rock, missing the effluvium of tidbits and news enjoyed by those who leave the house time to time, so I had NO idea who had written The Visitor, only that I wanted to see it. Badly.
Enter knight on white steed: Gavin of Town and Country Video, possessor of the wisdom to order the film and include it in his new-release inventory. Fates thanked afresh, hands trembling, the movie commences. Few feelings are as distinct and delicious as the first five minutes of a film you’ve been dying to see, are finally seeing. Yes, I would have preferred to see it in the darkened [if icy] cinema, but no matter. And it is a great movie. A very simple idea rendered with affection and intelligence. Not a perfect movie, but very much worth seeing. A leaping-off place on the topic of what it costs the psyche and heart to endure illegal residency, to want a simple, good life and be told, “You can’t have it, sorry.”
Between “The Visitor” and Toni Morrison’s new novel, “A Mercy” I am feeling very, very inspired by the various possibilities of story in this often-fearsome world we’ve created for ourselves.
Listening to: Massive Attack
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