The Visitor

The Visitor (2007) is a movie about a recently widowed economics professor, Dr. Walter Vale (played by Richard Jenkins) who's life is changed when he meets a strange couple.Walter is a college professor who lives and works in Connecticut. He is sent to a conference at New York University to present a paper on global economics.

He keeps an apartment in the city but has not been there in quite awhile. When he arrives, he finds a Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira) living there. Tarek is from Syria and is a musician, while girlfriend Zainab is from Senegal and sells handmade jewelry as a street vendor. Although Walter does not call the cops to have them arrested, he asks them to leave. Later that same night, he finds them on the street outside with no where to go, and invites them to stay with him just for a few days.

Overtime, Walter and Tarek become friends, and share their love of music with one another. Walter shows interest in Tarek's drums, and he agrees to teach Walter how to play. One afternoon, after Tarek and Walter have been playing drums together in the park, they take the subway home. Tarek offers to pay Walter's fare, and having difficulty with the drums that they are carrying, Tarek is unable to get through the turnstile even after he has swiped his fare card for each of them. Police officers see him, think that him jumped the turnstile, and arrest him.

Walter learns from Zainab that they are both undocumented immigrants. Tarek is transferred from a police station to a detention center in Queens. Walter, feeling responsible for Tarek's arrest, hires a lawyer to help release Tarek. Tarek's mother travels from Detroit to New York to see if she can help release him from the detention center.

Walter's life as a college professor is portrayed as dull, boring, and very isolating, which seems to be a favorite interpretation of faculty life as portrayed in film. He goes about his life in a depressed manner, attends the conference without enthusiasm, and does not seem to have any joy in his life until he meets Tarek and Zainab. His academic work focuses on the economics of developing countries. When he tells Tarek what the conference that he is attending is about, Tarek says that Walter is studying places like where he and Zainab are from. Those at the conference seem far removed from the experiences of people like Tarek and Zainab, even though what they are researching and presenting on is purportedly related to places such as Syria and Senegal.

During the movie, Walter gives the impression that he is very busy with his work, even though we don't see him doing much in terms of academic work. He tells people that he is busy working on multiple books and they seem impressed. It is not until he meets Tarek's mother that he confesses:

I haven't done any real work in a very long time. I pretend. Pretend that I'm busy; that I'm working. I'm not doing anything.

This made me think about how some academics seem to enjoy bragging to one another about how busy they are, as if it is a competition to see who can be the busiest. And yet, perhaps because he was lacking a personal-professional balance in his life, his professional work was unproductive. Until he begins to play the drums and 'lives a little,' his character doesn't really come alive.

You can watch the preview of The Visitor here.