Review of The Immigrant (2013) by Karim G — 01 Feb 2015

An uneasy period drama, The Immigrant is a stylish, yet cold and bleak, movie that is bolstered by terrific performances and solid story-telling. With this in mind, it comes as a partial disappointment, the fact that such a story never really picks up emotionally to a level that could make the audience relate to it.

The movie takes us around the beginning of the XXth Century when two Polish sisters, Magda (Angela Sarafyan) and Ewa (Marion Cotillard) are trying to enter the America in pursue of their American Dream. When Magda is detained because of a sickness and Ewa is denied entry a mysterious gentleman named Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) appears and offers his help to Ewa. Quickly it becomes clear that Bruno's reasons for helping Ewa are not only emotional, but also "business" related. The Immigrant soon reveals itself as an extremely bleak and quite depressing drama that shows the reality of a lost woman who is abandoned by family while trying to still save her sister. The early 1920s are depicted in a stylish way, but only in a way that emphasize the old-fashioned atmosphere of the movie. Quite convincingly, The Immigrant sets the right mood for the period drama that is aspires to be. Further on, James Gray's movie develops from a bleak depiction of the reality into a sort of emancipation noir story in which there nothing is completely black or completely white.

Unfortunately, the wonderfully created set up is sometimes too bleak and the narrative unable to work on the emotional side of the viewers. Marion Cotillard delivers a formidable performance, restrained, yet determined, but the remaining male cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner) appear flat and without much depth in their characters. That results in a beautifully shot drama which hardly succeeds the keep the audience involved after the first minutes of initial curiosity. Combined with the slow overall pace and twists from a social realism story, through emancipation and to a story of redemption, James Gray's movie feels somehow chaotic.

Still, if you are someone who does not mind watching period dramas, beautiful settings and costumes you would probably find The Immigrant to be an excellent movie. For the rest, it could be considered as passable home cinema option for a lazy winter Sunday evening.