THE IMMIGRANT (2013)
Directed and
co-written by James Gray
Kingsgate Films, 120
minutes, R (mild nudity, language)
* * ½
The Immigrant was
released to critical acclaim, including a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes.
Audiences, however, have been less than enthralled. Internet audience scores
hover in the C-/D+ range ad, for once, the hoi
polloi is right. Despite a strong cast and a compelling subject, The Immigrant is as gray and
inhospitable as the February waters of New York harbor.
The year is 1921 and Polish Cybulska sisters Ewa (Marion
Cotillard) and Magda (Angela Sarafyan) are in line at Ellis Island, hoping to
be admitted to the United States. The year is crucial–World War One is just
over, a conflict in which Poland was scorched and Cossacks killed Ewa and
Magda’s parents, and it's three years before the harsh National Origins Act
would slam the door on most Polish immigrants. Nonetheless, the Cybulskas are
bucking long odds–Ewa because she caused an in-transit disturbance and is
suspected of low morals, and Magda because of a nasty cough. When their aunt
fails to appear to claim them, Magda is spirited away to a TB ward and Ewa marked
for deportation as “likely to become a public charge.” At the last moment,
though, a benefactor appears in the person of Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix),
who bribes an immigration official and takes Ewa across to New York, feeds her,
and gives her a room in which to stay.
Bruno is more moved by Ewa’s luminous face and comely
features than by Christian charity. As it happens, he’s the impresario of an
elderly madam’s seedy burlesque house, a front for a brothel operating through
payoffs to local cops and the pretense of being down-market legit in the waning
days of vaudeville. Bruno is taken with Ewa, but it’s clear what she must do to
raise the cash to bribe Ellis Island officials and secure her sister’s release.
That’s the set up and rest is aimed at resolving some rather obvious dilemmas
that emerge: Why did Ewa’s relatives fail to show? Which will fill faster,
Bruno’s heart or purse? Will Ewa chuck Bruno in favor of his smooth-talking
magician/performer cousin Emil (Jeremy Renner)? Is Magda still on Ellis Island?
Is she even alive? Will the soiled Ewa regain her Catholic virtue?
Cotillard and Phoenix are both superb (even when the later
falls prey to his tendency to channel Brando is his Grand Mumbler period), but
they can’t rescue a limp script that meanders from predictable to absurd. In
the latter category place Emil. Jeremy Renner is a fine actor, but his role in The Immigrant is more akin to a cartoon
than a dramatic foil. Maybe it’s the gloomy tenements, basement clubs, dim
oyster houses, and light-deprived winter skies, but the movie both looks dreary
and plays that way. Buildups become aimless meanders through the gloaming, and
what should be big climaxes induce all the passion of a shoulder shrug. Nor is
it possible to care deeply about characters about whom we know (or ever come to
know) so little. The frisson
between Cotillard and Phoenix simply isn’t enough to redeem a script that never
should have gotten off the island.
Rob Weir
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