Superb movie, with a fine performance by veteran character actor Richard Jenkins, getting a rare change at a leading role.
You're most likely to know Jenkins from Six Feet Under, where he played the dead father of the Fisher family. Here, he's Walter Vale, a Connecticut college professor who's reached late middle age without ever finding anything in life to be excited about. His marriage might have fulfilled that purpose at one point, but since his wife's death, he's buried himself in lackluster teaching of his Intro to Economics course -- updating the syllabus means changing "2006" to "2007" on the first page -- and vague attempts to finish the book he's been writing for years. Walter is none too pleased, therefore, when he's ordered to New York to present a paper on behalf of an ill colleague.
He's kept an apartment in New York for many years, though he hasn't visited it recently. It's still a surprise, though, to find a young couple living there as if it were their apartment. Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zaineb (Danai Gurira) are immigrants (from Syria and Senegal, respectively) who live on the income from Zaineb's hand-crafted jewelry; they clearly have nowhere else to go, and Walter offers to let them stay.
The outline of the plot from this point may sound overly familiar -- another story in which an uptight, repressed WASP learns to live from the free-spirited minority -- and it could easily have turned into a gooey sentimental mess of feel-good liberalism; to his credit, writer-director McCarthy finds surprising moments in the story. Even if the movie does go pretty much where we expect it to, it doesn't always take the route we expect.
The other principal member of the cast is Haim Abbass, who plays Tarek's mother, and small supporting roles are filled by superb New York actors like Michael Cumpsty, Richard Kind, and Marion Seldes; all are top-notch. Haaz Sleiman is particularly appealing, bringing such warmth to Tarek that it's easy to see how even an emotional stiff like Walter can't help but melt in his presence.
The movie deals with political issues -- we eventually learn that Tarek and Zaineb are in the United States illegally -- but doesn't take a stand on either side of the issue, aside from noting the rather obvious fact that the immigration and deportation system we've concocted is a bureaucratic nightmare. What I enjoyed most, though, is the notion of music as a cross-cultural bridge: Tarek teaches Walter to play the djembe (it's never commented on that it's the Syrian Tarek, not the Senegalese Zaineb, who plays this African drum); Walter and Tarek's mother bond over classical piano and Broadway musicals.
One of the best movies of the year so far. Absolutely recommended with great enthusiasm.
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