The Immigrant (2013) - Review

The Immigrant. Photograph: Anne Joyce

This past weekend I saw two movies, and The Immigrant was one of them, in which it seemed that filmmakers were opting for old fashioned emotional filmmaking. Perhaps for any number of reasons, not least among them the now-arrived onslaught of summer blockbusters, it was tough not to view these films as a reaction. A reaction to films that seek to appeal to sensory reaction and that tend to want to impress with awesome computer generated sights rather than putting in the hard work to connect with audiences on an emotional level. If this past weekend is any sign, I'd take the emotional over the spectacle every damn time.

The Immigrant is set in 1921. Marion Cotillard plays Ewa, who, along with her sickly sister, is fleeing from a post-World War I Poland. They lost their parents during the war and only have an address with the names of their aunt and uncle in Brooklyn. While waiting in line at Ellis Island, however, the sickly sister is put into quarantine. When Ewa arrives at immigration, she is told that she is rumored to be of loose morals and will not be admitted.

Seemingly coming to Ewa's rescue is Bruno, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix is a pimp who works through a shady vaudeville theater (that survives by selling illicit alcohol). Thankfully director and co-writer James Gray does not treat Ewa as a dumb little girl - they make clear that she knows right from the get-go what type of man Bruno is. But Ewa is a strong woman - she is determined to stay in America and, even more so, to rescue her sister. She will survive by any means necessary, even if she hates herself for it.

Eventually realizing that she is unwanted by her aunt and uncle, and with nowhere else to turn, Ewa reluctantly joins Bruno's collection of girls. Bruno does not beat the girls, but Phoenix plays him as a nonetheless petty, vile man. Bruno lets on that he started as a poor immigrant, and has realized that the only way to survive is to do whatever it takes to get the money he needs to survive. The one weakness that Bruno allows himself is to fall in love with Ewa, even though she makes clear she despises him.

While Ewa works to make enough money to bribe her sister out of Ellis Island quarantine, she meets Orlando, a two-bit magician played by Jeremy Renner. Orlando is Bruno's cousin and is despised by Bruno for a past that involves getting Bruno in trouble and, more critically, once stealing a girl that Bruno loved. Bruno explains that he had hidden his true occupation and life from the girl, but that Orlando found out and brought the girl to the theater, causing Bruno's humiliation and for the girl to dump Bruno for Orlando.

It seems less likely that Bruno is upset about losing the girl than he is upset by the realization, forced on him by Orlando, that he’ll never truly be able to escape his shady life or to be able to so much as pretend to be a respectable member of society. It was the death of Bruno’s American Dream, and for that he cannot forgive Orlando. When Bruno sees Orlando making a play at Ewa, Bruno is set alight with rage and anger.

While Ewa tries to mediate between Orlando, the man she actually seems to love, and Bruno, the man she needs, rage and anger ultimately prevail and tragedy ensues. This leads to a cascading set of failures which seem to deprive Ewa of her own American Dream – to have a life with her sister in America. Only she is allowed one more opportunity for salvation – dependent on forgiveness and, more importantly, daring to ask for it.

The New York and America that Gray depicts is hardly a pleasant place – it is dark and dirty, racist and corrupt, humiliating and brutal. But Gray recognizes the duality of America – for all its foibles, it still offers a chance at redemption like few other places ever have. Gray’s America is a place that exploits and despises the very same immigrants that it invites to its shores. And yet that same America also falls in love with those despised classes of immigrants, and adopts them as its own, while the immigrants assimilate to America as well.

That Gray’s film tells yet another story of the struggles of white European immigrants makes it familiar, but it is still effective. And, if people have enough sense to apply the film’s subject matter to other immigrant classes even today, it has something to say even about today’s America.

Gray’s film is not about depicting America as a broken place, even though the mirror it holds up to America appears as tarnished as the one Ewa tries to pretty herself before while in an Ellis Island holding cell. The conclusion reached in The Immigrant is that, for all the darkness to be found in America, there is still so much hope, and that redemption is there for those that seek it and that can endure through the hardships to demand it. When Ewa is at her darkest, she is reminded to not surrender her hope. And she never does, ultimately finding redemption not through her sins, but in seeking forgiveness for them and asking that someone she knows not give up on her or her sister. The film is, on one hand, brutal, and on the other hand, emotionally romantic.

There is a romanticized dreaminess about The Immigrant that infects the visual presentation. The sepia tones suggest almost a faded photograph or sense memory - although these moments are often broken up by moments of brutal grey and black color palettes. Ewa has one sure dream, but there are other moments where one wonders if she may have been dreaming it. A pivotal scene in a church is presented in a manner that eschews realism in favor of dreamily presenting Ewa’s faith and her reconnection with the Church (and unintentional disclosures and an almost ministry to Bruno, a man deeply in need of his own redemption).

The film also has a religious streak to it. A priest essentially sums the film up by explaining that Christ does not ever fail to forgive and that there is always a path for redemption in the eyes of the Lord.

I appreciated that Gray did not seem to pity Ewa or turn her into a helpless victim, although the film certainly does encourage us to fall in love with her (Cotillard’s beauty sure, but also nailing her mix of tough-as-nails determination, devastating self-hatred, and human vulnerability). I also appreciated that Gray provides a path for redemption – or at least some kind of redemption – for Bruno, rather than depicting him as unfailingly wicked and cruel. The characters in the film are rich and multi-dimensional; they are not caricatures, but real people struggling to fend for themselves in brutal circumstances.

Gray also embraces the emotional context of the film. The characters shine through, and there is almost an old-fashioned sense of emotional melodrama that shoots through the proceedings. The film wants less for you to rage against what has happened and more to sympathize with the characters (without overt pity or demanding that you hate even the most villainous among them). There is a sense of nostalgia and longing that infects the film – adding an emotional connection to a visual connection with Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. While the film is deeply complex and takes no easy paths, it also feels like a period piece from a different time, a different era in Hollywood.

It is both thoroughly modern and yet quite old-fashioned. While the depth of character is nice, it is also nice to feel some good old-fashioned emotion every once in a while.

Screened at the theater.