No hope or glory, but a heart of gold
Old-fashioned melodrama tells immigrant’s tale
The frames have the brownish, ominous tint of old blood. The sets conjure the smell of mou ld a nd cloy i ng perfume.
And the story itself feels like something left behind in Charlotte Brontë’s bottom drawer.
In most cases, those would be good reasons to skip The Immigrant, but it’s clear director James Gray was going for a sense of desperation in his latest effort steeped in the ancient soot of New York City.
Opening in the great hall of Ellis Island just a stone’s throw from the Statue of Liberty circa 1925, The Immigrant makes good on its title from the moment we meet Marion Cotillard as Ewa, a young woman who just made the long journey from Poland with her sister.
They were hoping to start a new life in the New World, but when the sister is quarantined with a lung infection and Ewa’s reputation is sullied from an incident on the boat, they both face deportation.
Enter Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), the knight in slimy snakeskin.
Bruno hangs out at the deportation centre to solicit and scout for new recruits.
He tells gorgeous women he can help with their application by helping them find a job and a home. What he doesn’t tell them is how.
Ewa realizes Bruno probably doesn’t have entirely altruistic aims, but she has no choice.
She can’t leave her sister in quarantine by herself. And she has no other way of staying in the United States without financial resources.
She follows Bruno back to his dilapidated flat and discovers he’s been ‘helping’ other women as well by employing them as part of his burlesque show, which is really just a front for his prostitution business.
At this point, the whole movie prompts nothing more than a heavy sigh because we’ve seen the story of the fallen woman before.
We’ve also seen the American immigrant experience brought to life in other films, and usually with a mandatory hint of hope.
Gray dispenses with the God Bless America attitude and its unspoken cult of optimism and goes straight for a feeling of complete and utter alienation.
This story is told through the eyes of Ewa, and for the most part, they are tearfilled.
Yet, for all the morose emotion and breathless heaviness to every frame, there’s an undeniably grown-up sensibility to it all that makes it watchable.
Moreover, for all the martyrdom of our central character, Ewa is also incredibly strong.
Cotillard plays the part with perfect pragmatism, showing us what women from the Old Country were truly made of: backbone and ennui.
Cotillard becomes the torch in this dim exercise that feels gratuitously punishing because she communicates strength and beauty no matter what happens.
She’s oppressed, but she stands tall, much like lady Liberty who graces the opening frames.
Phoenix, on the other hand, is predictably creepy.
For the fourth time, Gray casts the oddball actor into the role of a flawed and frustrated romantic and it’s enough to give you chills because his thirst for love is so crushing, it makes him dangerous.
If you’re able to stand back from the bleak content and just look at the performances and the production design, The Immigrant is a complete and artistically inspired piece of filmmaking that pays homage to every new citizen forced to make a fresh start.
But it’s also pure, old-fashioned melodrama that could try your patience if you’re not mentally prepared for the process.
Or if you’ve got a natural aversion to any story featuring a hooker with a heart of gold.