The Immigrant (2014)

[K1stpierre]

Discuss

[Jake Gittes]

There are two things you should know about this movie:

1) it's absolutely fantastic

2) Harvey Weinstein wanted it edited and, after being refused by James Gray, dumped it so brutally that it still doesn't have a scheduled Blu-ray release in the US and has no awards consideration campaign, despite high acclaim and even several awards from critics. All the more reason for you to seek it out, because see 1).

 

It's not hard to see why Weinstein, a guy who specializes in selling conventional entertainment to Oscar voters, would be displeased with The Immigrant, which is a brilliant film largely because of how it escapes cliché. The premise is deceptively simple: in 1921, a Polish immigrant Ewa (Marion Cotillard) arrives in America, where she isn't met by her relatives and gets picked up by a pimp named Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), who gives her a job and whose cousin Orlando (Jeremy Renner) later is taken by her and wants her to escape with him.

 

It sounds like obvious melodrama fodder, but instead the character work here is brilliantly subversive. In a less intelligent film, Ewa would be naive and helpless, Bruno would be charming and sleazy, Orlando would be a noble white knight, and the three of them would form a love triangle. Gray, however, writes them as real people with messy and complicated feelings who make decisions for reasons lying beyond convention and expectation. They reveal new strengths and weaknesses in almost every new scene in an entirely natural and consistent way. Even Orlando, who seems to be included in the film just so it can have more than two major characters (my only issue with the movie), makes up for it with his complexity. 

 

The performances are all as powerful as the material demands them to be - Cotillard does the best work of her career here, Phoenix delivers another flawless turn as far removed from his other recent work as it can be, and Renner again shows how effective he can be as a character actor. They combine emotion and expression with depth, as does the whole film: presenting itself at first as an old-fashioned melodrama, it proceeds to move and develop like a 1970s New Hollywood character study. The fusion is masterful: it's a period piece that frees itself from formula and consequently feels more energetic and alive than most contemporary movies. Ewa's story here is one you could imagine her telling her grandchildren 50 years after the events of the film, but as written and acted, it has genuine immediacy and verve that makes it feel like you're watching personal history unfold right before your eyes, all the way to an exhilarating ending and the final shot that is my pick for the best - and most beautiful - of the whole year. 

[4815162342]

It's good, but it felt like it was missing something.

 

The last shot is brilliant and the three leads are all very good.

[Goffe]

Gray, however, writes them as real people with messy and complicated feelings who make decisions for reasons lying beyond convention and expectation. They reveal new strengths and weaknesses in almost every new scene in an entirely natural and consistent way. Even Orlando, who seems to be included in the film just so it can have more than two major characters (my only issue with the movie), makes up for it with his complexity. 

that's exactly the reason why I loved this movie so much, that and Cotillard hypnotic acting. Phoenix was great too.

the ending was very emotional and the last shot was brilliant. 85 maybe 90/100

Edited January 17, 2015 by Goffe Ascending

[The Stingray]

I thought this would be a lot better. It never really grabbed me.

 

6.5/10