(USA, 120
min.)
Dir. James
Gray, Writ. James Gray, Rick Menello
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner
 |
| Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard star in The Immigrant, an eOne Films release |
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries sheWith silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”-“The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus.
The Immigrant is
in the midst of a theatrical run that opened in town of the Fourth of July.
Independence Day seems like an ironically fitting day to amplify the resonance
of this beautiful yet bleak picture from writer/director James Gray. The film
begins and ends on Ellis Island in 1921, and this haunting tragedy gives a
startling urgent tale of the fallacy of the American dream.
The Statue of Liberty creeps out of the mist when The Immigrant opens with Ewa (Marion
Cotillard) arriving at Ellis Island with her sister, Magda (Angela Sarafyan),
with whom she left Poland. Ewa urges her sister to stifle her coughs and appear
composed, but the port authorities detain Magda due to poor health. Ewa keeps
her head down and passes through the line. The immigration officials deem her a
liability, though, since her aunt and uncle, her supposed hosts for her arrival
in the new country, fail to show up and claim her. Minutes away from
deportation, Ewa, a survivor, impresses a seemingly earnest gentleman named
Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) with her startling looks and fluent English. Bruno
seems to be the only many eager to fulfill Lady Liberty’s promise to welcome
the tired, poor, and huddled masses in search of freedom.
Bruno, though, simply harbors the wretched upon his own
teeming shore. The Immigrant thrusts
the respectably composed Ewa into the role of a lowlife as Bruno proposes that
she earn her keep by taking a job in his bawdy house. Bruno, unsurprisingly,
coaxes her into prostitution.
The Immigrant
unfolds like a fable as Ewa’s hope spirals into ill-fated destiny. The film is
saturated in cultural mythology as Ewa slaves in pursuit of the American Dream
and the palpable urgency of her tale suggests that this is a story that had
been told before. She suffers quietly and passively as she clings to an
unwavering belief that everything will be all right in the end, but Gray slowly
leads The Immigrant through an
ominous crescendo of foreboding atmosphere that suggests that Ewa’s story
cannot end well. Her belief in salvation and her hope for being united with
Magda lies in a cruel bind that smothers her with affectionate exploitation
from Bruno’s side and, from the other, the romantic promise of escape from
Bruno’s rival Orlando the Magician (Jeremy Renner). Bruno, jealous of Orlando’s
interest in Ewa, falls into a volatile tailspin the more Orlando promises aid.
A step into towards freedom is thus a step into danger no matter the direction
Ewa pursues.
Perhaps the cruelest irony of Ewa’s odyssey is the role she
plays in Bruno’s seedy burlesque. Ewa, cast in the part of Lady Liberty, must
strut herself before an audience of vulgar onlookers as she shirks timidly
about the stage draped in a green robe and holding a torch for the viewing
pleasure of American men. This wannabe American must take the symbol of hope
and prosperity in the new world and turn it into a titillating cabaret. The
American Dream is nothing more than a dirty, sordid rag.
The travesty of making it in America is apparent in the
chorus of Americans Ewa encounters during her tours through the gutter and
boarding houses of Manhattan. Only charlatans, thieves, whores, gamblers, and
well-to-do men leeching off the misery of others populate the America Ewa sees.
There is no prosperity here, only hardship.
Ewa’s journey is one of heartache as embodied in the
exceptionally strong performance by Marion Cotillard. Cotillard, who seems to
have a handle on both speaking Polish and speaking English with a Polish
accent, easily gives the standout performance of the year so far in her subtly
devastating act of resigned suffering and dutiful survivalism. Ewa is a tragic
mix of shame, pride, hope, and disappointment as Cotillard gives the best magic
act of all in the film—even more impressive than Orlando’s levitation—by embodying
the masses of people who have been crushed by the American Dream yet retain
hope because there is no returning home.
There’s little hope for Ewa save further exploitation and The Immigrant realizes Ewa’s predicament
most powerfully when she goes to her first confession at church since arriving
in America. The immigrant wraps herself in a shawl, making Cotillard resemble
the likes of cinematic heroines such as Anna Magnani or Sofia Loren, and pleads
before God for forgiveness not only for herself, but also for the pimp she
insists is a good man. Cotillard has never conveyed such a range of emotion with
her big beautiful eyes as she does in this confession.
Phoenix is equally impressive in one of his more low-key
performances. His brooding, charismatic Bruno is truly a detestable figure, but
he’s equally pitiable for how pathetically he thrives in the gutter. (A fact
that Gray shows with some spot-on location use for Bruno’s cabaret-style
pimping.) He’s a strong foil for Cotillard’s heartrending Ewa. Ditto Jeremy
Renner’s uncomfortably smooth Orlando, who resembles an even bigger snake eager
to swallow Ewa as he prowls in the alleys and shadows looking to seduce Lady
Liberty.
The Immigrant
easily marks a career high for Gray as he boldly tackles the perversion of the
American Dream in the imbalanced relationships presented in this tale. This
American tragedy feels especially relevant not only for the land of Lady
Liberty, but for all for the west that shrouds itself in a veneer of openness
and acceptance, yet acts as a breeding ground for alienation and xenophobia.
Ewa, as the proverbial other, is helplessly homeless the moment she docks at
Ellis Island with hopes for the future. Escaping a war ravaged past, yet
exploited and displaced in her landed destination, Ewa embodies the generations
of anonymous Americans forced to live as exiles within the land that offers her
shelter.
The film marks Gray’s most ambitious and most richly
realized film, for The Immigrant seems
to have no equal among contemporary American films, except perhaps for Scorsese's sprawling Gangs of New York. The soberly paced Immigrant displays top-notch production
work across the board beginning with the trio of strong performances. The
costumes by Patricia Norris (12 Years a
Slave) are impeccable period outfits that dress Ewa in a range of fetching
flapper garb (for which Cotillard seems perfectly tailored after Midnight in Paris) and working class
Sunday best. The cinematography by Darius Khondji (Midnight in Paris) is luminous, as The Immigrant drips with a glowing sheen and fogginess. It looks
and feels like a classic. The film features a remarkable palette of light and
shadows to situate Ewa’s odyssey in some sepia tinged in-between place amid a
dream and a nightmare.
The outstanding visual work of The Immigrant leaves a lasting impressive with the film’s masterful
final shot that splits the fates of Ewa and Bruno in two different yet equally
dire frames. Gray and Khondji divide the stars using a window and a mirror to
see them leave the same origin as they go in different directions but are
ultimately heading nowhere. This complicated composition, bathed in dank dusty
light, leaves an endless horizon for future heartbreak. It’s the work of a
master.
Rating: ★★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Immigrant screens in Ottawa at The ByTowne until July 10 and at The Mayfair from July 18 - 22.
