"The Visitor"

In 2008, Tom McCarthy crafted The Visitor by writing and directing a piece of cinema that examines the social temperature in the United States in a post-911 world. At the core of this film is the political issue of immigration, but The Visitor investigates the social, humanistic stripes of that issue using the supporting foreign roles to further develop and evolve the American protagonist. Walter, the film’s leading character, is pulled out of his widower slumber by forming relationships with immigrant characters. The investment McCarthy places on his characters and the ways in which the supporting foreign roles impact the American protagonist is the path in which he leads the viewer to recognize the issue. The Visitor fully utilizes the potential of its mise-en-scene to develop Walter’s journey in relation to Tarek, Zinab, and Mouna, which is encapsulated through motifs of music and the use of blue colors to describe different types of unity.

Who is Walter and what happened to him?

In his review, film critic Roger Ebert describes the film’s subdued explanation of Walter, his past, and many details that are left unexplained:

“So much goes unsaid, and unseen. Events in Walter’s professorial job happen off-screen. We are left to listen to the silences and observe the spaces.”

 

At the heart of The Visitor is Walter. The film never verbally informs us of significant events in Walter’s past, but all the necessary information to understand the plot is implied through the visuals. Walter’s past is a key component in understanding how and why he changes during the film after he meets Tarek, Zinab, and Mouna.

 

The Visitor’s opening shot begins by revealing that Walter’s wife is dead, and as a result, Walter is stuck in an apathetic frame of mind with a stagnant vitality for life. In the first shot, the camera is placed near the dining room table, two empty chairs from the table bookend each side of the frame. In the center of the frame is Walter, farther back from the chairs, looking out a window. The two empty chairs insinuate the loss of his wife, and Walter feels imprisoned in a stagnant world by this loss, only watching the action of the real world, not experiencing it for himself. He stares out the window, subconsciously looking for something or someone that could still be his. The shot continues when the doorbell rings, the camera, without an editing cut, moves inches to left exposing the front door as Walter walks to open it. This, the first shot in the film, shows that with this story, Walter is about to open a door to a new chapter of his life, a chapter that could awaken him from this slumber and revitalize the spirit of his life.

The pinnacle moment that reveals Walter’s growth is the film’s climatic moment, Tarek being deported without warning or notification. Walter goes to the detention center and demands answers from the officer at the front desk. He’s given little to no details about Tarek’s current status and location, the guard only states, “He has been removed.” Most of the scene is filmed shot-reverse-shot of each character through the opposite character’s side of the window. With not given any substantial details about the deportation on someone he cares about, Walter lashes out at the guard, yelling at him, “It’s not fair!”

When the audience sees Walter during this scene, he is mainly shown from behind the window of the guard. The window acts as a barrier between Walter and the law, literally and figuratively. As he misguidedly denounces the man, Walter is confined to the waiting room of the detention center and always at a distance from the officer, and more importantly, this window barrier represents Walter’s indignation and distance from the law. He has grown to care for Tarek, as well as Mouna and Zinab. They have touched his life and Walter is emotionally invested in them, but that does not change the fact that Tarek is an illegal alien. Walter’s line of dialogue, “It’s not fair” and his zealous reaction show his divide from the law of the United States due to his investment in these people who have reinvigorated his life.

Therapeutic Music

One of the most invaluable plot devices in The Visitor concerning Walter’s characterization is music. He looks to music as something that can cure his soul and bring him closer to a connection, which at first he looks for in his wife’s memory. Walter’s wife was a very skilled pianist, and Walter, clinging for the company of someone or the comfort of his deceased wife, attempts to learn the piano. His inability to master the instrument leads his piano teacher to tell him that, “Learning an instrument at your age is difficult, “ emblematically, this dialogue suggests that learning to play the piano to further connect to his wife is not going to fulfill Walter’s loneliness.

 

The piano creates classical music, which can be regarded as “more traditional” form of musical composition in the United States. He continues to lean towards the more traditional ideas, struggling his way through playing the piano before he goes to the city. Once he goes to New York and meets Tarek, Walter begins to show interest in the African street drum, a non-traditional instrument for a conventional American like Walter. Tarek is patient with teaching him, and eventually Walter learns to play the drums comfortably. Forming such a deep friendship with Tarek is atypical for someone Walter’s age and ideology, and by learning to play Tarek’s drum, this symbolizes Walter adapting to Tarek’s culture, growing personally, and becoming happier from that. The first scene in which the awkwardness dissipates between Walter and Tarek is the scene where Tarek offers to teach Walter how to play the drums. Music is the catalyst that brings Walter and Tarek closer together.

Twice is the viewer shown scenes of Walter playing music in his home in Connecticut, once before he meets Tarek, Zinab, and Mouna playing the piano, and then another after he establishes bonds with them and plays the drums. In the scene where he plays the piano, the room is darkly lit, the only light source is above a black and white photograph of a man standing alone on a beach. The man in the photograph is very similar to how Walter sees himself psychologically: a lone, colorless man, struggling to find anyone with whom to connect. In the second scene, Walter passionately slams his hands on the drums creating seismic noise and shedding ample amounts of energy. And every light in the room in which he plays is beaming, illuminating the house. The contrast between these two scenes explicitly describes Walter’s newly acquired vivacity and zest for his life. Once these three characters come into Walter’s world, the slow, graceful, tranquil beat of classical music is shaken awake by the fervent, noisy, vibrant drums.

Blue Unity

When reviewing The Visitor in 2008, film critic Peter Travers took special note on the focus on the communication between the characters. Travers describes the film by stating this in his review:

“[McCarthy] lets issues present themselves through personal interaction.”

The Visitor is about the characters relating to one another, and a way in which McCarthy does this is by using a themed color of clothing to describe the unity between Walter and the foreign people he meets in the story. The color blue comes to represent Watler, because in nearly every scene, he appears in a blue dress shirt underneath his suit jackets.

 

The color blue unites Tarek and Walter on a human scale. Tarek is almost exclusively seen in a darker blue, navy shirt. Before he is confined to the correction center and even his uniform in the detention center is the same navy shade of blue. They may not be identically the same, Walter wears a lighter hue of blue than Tarek, but the colors are still blue.

The color blue is most notably memorable for being the primary color used in the mural of New York City on the wall in the detention. In this mural is a blue-colored skyline of the city, as well as images of the American flag and the statue of liberty, both of which are items that represent freedom. The flag and statute of liberty however are not painted in blue. Though Tarek is an illegal immigrant and Walter is American, they are both still humans who contribute to the Untied States, which is represented in the non-specific city buildings in the detention center mural, as they are painted in blue. However, Walter has his freedom, Tarek does not. Freedom within the United States is more than just being a human who contributes to society, like the paintings of the Statute of Liberty and the American flag, which represent categorical freedom, use more colors than just blue.

Another meaningful similarity in blue clothing is Walter and Tarek’s mother, Mouna. This character is vital to Walter’s character development, because she begins to fill the void left from the death of his wife. As they bond, a romantic undercurrent begins to surface between the two characters in the film’s second half. In the scene when Walter and Mouna meet the attorney who eventually defends Tarek, Walter and Mouna wear the same shades of blue clothing under jackets. The tones of blue being so similar suggests an indelible connection, and this is the connection that begins to caress Walter’s tensed up feeling of the world.

The same shade of blue reoccurs throughout the film but specifically when Mouna and Walter spend the night together on a date. Walter’s dress shirt underneath his suit jacket is the same color of the necklace Mouna wears. Walter confesses to Mouna something on this date that he does not discuss with anyone else in the film. “I pretend that I’m working, that I’m righting…I’m not doing anything.” He divulges this information of not feelings fulfilled to her, a confession that shows his solid trust in her.

Sailing Away

A piece of imagery that aptly concludes the investigation into Walter’s character development based on the mise-en-scene in The Visitor is the immediate shot on the ferry of Walter with Mouna and Zinab. Closer in the frame are the three characters standing against the railing of the boat, and behind them lies a wide shot of New York City. In this shot, Walter is sailing away from the island with the new people in his life, figuratively leaving the old life behind. The Visitor is a process of personal growth for Walter, which is developed through the mise-en-scene subtly transcribing Walter’s past and his evolution to the viewer through subtle clues, the importance of Walter’s ability and inability play music, and the use of blue colors to unite characters of different ethnicities.