Interview: Richard Jenkins on The Visitor

Richard Jenkins has had a fantastic 12 months, earning the biggest recognition so far in a long career for his great performance in Tom McCarthy’s film The Visitor. In the film he plays Walter Vale, a lonely academic who, through a strange set of coincidences, finds himself sharing his apartment with two Sudanese refugees. Fantastically, he’s nominated for Best Male Lead in next weekend’s Academy Awards, and I had a brief chance to talk to him about the role when he was in Scotland for the Edinburgh Film Festival last year:

The Visitor could be seen as a movie about asylum seekers - an ‘issue movie’ - but it’s really about people, isn’t it?
I never saw it as an issue movie, and Tom didn’t either. That’s not what’s interesting, and there’s a lot of movies like that. But if we get involved with someone’s life then we can see the effect something has on their life and that’s what he did so brilliantly with the movie I think. It’s like he put a face on the issue. It’s a relationship movie, and this just happened to be part of it. You do take it with you but it’s not the main thing you take away with you; you go away wondering what happens to these people.

What do you think happens to the characters?
I don’t know. It’s a question we get asked every time and it means that you care about these people, but until they make a sequel, I don’t know! I’ve had people say “I know what happens! He goes to Syria and he brings her… is that what happens?” and I’m like, “I don’t know! The movie ended!” But it’s so great to have people investing in those characters. And then some people say they don’t like the way it ended, but that’s life and that’s the way it happens. If the movie had been given a Hollywood ending I think it would have been much less effective.

Have you kept up playing the djembe since learning for the movie?
No. I played drums when I was young. I played for about five years when I was in Junior high. I quit when I was about 14, I wasn’t very good. But it helped me in this movie!

Walter goes through a lot of change in the course of the movie, but it’s all happening inside. How did you prepare and get confident that your performance could speak louder than words?
We had two weeks of wonderful rehearsal; we talked about the script, and read the script, and changed the script. But the truth is, you don’t really know what I’m thinking, but by the end of the movie you understand this man. Because I was thinking of a million things, and I wasn’t even sure what I was thinking at the time. But what I tried to do was just live this life and trust that an audience would understand what’s going on in this guy, without having everything spelled out for them saying “now I’m happy, now I’m sad” because I wasn’t sure half the time what I was feeling. Conflicted many times!

So it was Tom who said I had to trust the camera and that the audience would understand it. The thing is, people connect with other human beings and it’s a subconscious thing, it’s an emotional connection. We’ve all been in movies where everything is explained to us and we understand it, but it doesn’t mean anything to us. It’s that thing of wondering what’s going to happen next. Who is this guy? Who are these people? What is she really like? For me when I watch a movie that’s what I love, and that’s what you love about the great ones. I just saw Eastern Promises where Viggo Mortensen gives an extraordinary performance. I didn’t know what the hell was going on in his head, but I tell you something, by the end of the movie I understood that guy. I couldn’t take my eyes off him!

Will the great response to The Visitor affect roles that are available to you?
It’s kind of a gradual thing if it does. I’m 61. I don’t know how much of an effect it can have on me, and that’s not for me to speculate on. I try not to think about that because it just hurts your feelings in the end anyway.


I hope that Richard isn’t experiencing too many hurt feelings at the moment, but I think it’s unlikely, given his upcoming work includes a part in Joss Whedon’s latest, Cabin in the Woods, and his Oscar nomination will doubtless bring him to a much wider audience. The Visitor is released on dvd in the UK on 23rd February. I promise this is the last time I’ll go on about it, just make sure you check it out!

Oscars 2009: My best actor pick

It’s a good year for acting at the Oscars. While the Best Picture category is disappointing in its safe choices – unforgivably ignoring both Wall-E and The Dark Knight - the acting categories tell a better story. In the Leading Actor category it’s particularly heartening to see Richard Jenkins’ perfectly understated performance in The Visitor getting the recognition it deserves; hopefully the nomination will cause a wider UK audience to seek the film out when it’s released on dvd (the day after the Oscars, conveniently!).

But good as Jenkins is, I think the category really comes down to a battle between Sean Penn in Milk and Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Concerning the other two nominees, Brad Pitt’s Benjamin Button turn is nothing special, and his nomination is just one more aspect of the general overrating of this mediocre film. Frank Langella, on the other hand, fully deserves to be in there, as his portrayal of Nixon in Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon is excellent. But good as he is, I was always aware that I was watching Langella acting, as opposed to being drawn in to the reality of the character, so I don’t think he should win.

So who should take home the prize out of Penn and Rourke? Penn’s Harvey Milk is a wonderfully inspiring creation, all the more worthy of praise for how it stretches the actor out of his generally sombre comfort zone. But as Highlander taught us, there can only be one winner, and I think it’s got to be Mickey Rourke for his heartbreaking performance as Randy ‘the Ram’ Robinson. If great acting is about completely inhabiting a character to the point where all an audience can see is a fully formed life played out on-screen, then Rourke in The Wrestler deserves to be ranked with the best.

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Top 5

It’s almost two weeks now since Edinburgh’s Film Festival wound up its first year as a June event. By all accounts it was a success, although I must admit that it didn’t feel quite as busy as the organisers are claiming it was, despite what I thought was a really good selection of movies. Yes, there were some disappointments – The Wackness, Stone of Destiny and much-hyped British debut Better Things were the biggest let-downs – but overall I got to see a lot of very good films; in fact, compiling a top 5 has been a little harder than I initially anticipated.

After much internal debate, here’s my pick of the five best films of the Festival, and more importantly, why they make the grade:

1. WALL-E – It may have been the most mainstream movie of the Festival but Pixar’s new film was also the best, representing another step forward for the already impossibly high-standard-setting animation studio. Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton takes the story of a cute little robot, left on earth for 700 years to clean up after humans have pretty much destroyed the planet and done a runner, and crafts a tale of loneliness, friendship and adventure that is both profoundly moving and bursting with stunning visual creativity. Added to this, WALL-E is a movie in love with the movies, packed with references to classics of the silver screen, with each homage incorporated as a relevant storytelling element, never feeling self-indulgent or unnecessary. It’s a true masterpiece, and my favourite film of the year so far.

2. The Visitor – Much smaller in scale than Pixar’s animation behemoth, this character-focused comedy-drama is equally accomplished in its writing, confirming Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) as a writer-director of considerable human insight and compassion. Eternal support actor Richard Jenkins is perfect in the lead as Walter Vale, a bored Connecticut University academic whose life takes a turn for the interesting when he discovers a refugee couple living in his New York apartment. After initially throwing them out, Walter has a change of heart and begins an unexpected friendship with the djembe-playing Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira). Things are complicated when Tarek is arrested and threatened with deportation, but while the film does tackle political issues, it is primarily about people, and McCarthy handles the balance of personal and political masterfully. Also featuring a brilliant performance from Hiam Abbass as Tarek’s mother, The Visitor is a true gem, and I would highly recommend seeking it out, as it’s in UK cinemas right now!

3. Man On Wire – The best of an excellent selection of documentaries at the Festival, James Marsh’s film presents a man and a feat that both have to be seen to be believed. The man is Philipe Petit, a French tightrope-walker of singular vision and enthusiasm, and the feat is an almost unbelievable wire-walk that he accomplished in 1974 between the newly-constructed World Trade Center towers. The fact that Petit and a handful of friends managed to break into the towers and successfully set up and carry out the illegal act is jaw-dropping enough, but the way it is retold here clearly conveys the profound emotional impact it had on everyone involved, and the film itself becomes more than just a historical document; it’s a powerfully inspiring piece of cinema.

4. Let The Right One In – This is a low-key Swedish character drama with a difference; it’s also a vampire movie. Almost sluggishly paced in its first hour, director Tomas Alfredson takes his sweet time in building the atmosphere in this story of a bullied 12-year-old who befriends the slightly odd girl next-door, but patience pays off as he uses the very low budget to stunning effect. It’s a film of creeping unease rather than high pitch scares, and concludes with a final set-piece that made me want to stand up and applaud. Apparently that’s exactly what happened at the critics’ screening, which is an event largely unheard of at film festivals. The film doesn’t seem to have UK distribution at the moment, and appears to have already been snapped-up for an English-language remake, but hopefully this original version will find its way to cinemas soon, as it’s really quite special.

5. Summer – Robert Carlyle is an actor that I’ve always found likeable but never amazing, but in Summer he gives, for my money, the best performance of his career. He picked up the Festival’s Best Actor award for his heart-breaking portrayal of Shaun, a man who we meet in a beaten-down state, brought low by the hand life has dealt him. Kenny Glenaan’s film flits back and forward in time to build up a picture of Shaun’s life, and occasionally the story is almost too sad to bear, but Carlyle brings such a recognisable warmth and longing to the character that we can’t help but stay with him. A much-needed note of hope at the conclusion slightly softens the film’s emotional wallop, but overall this is a deeply moving tale of loss and frustration, and Carlyle deserves heaps of praise for his amazing work in it.

So that’s my verdict. Just missing out on inclusion were Shane Meadows’ new one Somers Town, the lovely Amy Adams comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and an excellent British debut called Dummy, all of which are well worth investigation too. For now though, that’s my Festival experience wrapped up. Roll on London…

Info:
WALL-E (U) is released nationwide on 18 July.
The Visitor (15) is out now in selected cinemas.
Man On Wire (12A) is released nationwide on 1 August.
Let The Right One In and Summer have no scheduled UK release date.