Arenas4812
This is a great period piece! Really enjoyed the editing and the way it was shot. Joaquin Phoenix did a really good job as playing the pimp or slum lord of the film. The young actress who played the immigrant did a great job trying to make her way through the harsh world of early 20th century New York City. She winds up finding no family, her sister winds up on Ellis Island(in basically a jail), and she's got no money. I felt bad for her when her only Uncle called her dirty names and sided with cops and land lord. She accidentally finds Joaquin's brother while doing work on Ellis Island. While the film is slow, its good at the end. Good for a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Lee Eisenberg
Marion Cotillard puts on an impressive performance as a Polish woman immigrating to the United States in 1921. Upon arriving on Ellis Island, she has one bad experience after another. We see how even today people trying to enter the United States - most of them from Latin America - are more likely to spend time in detention facilities. Worse still, politicians claim that people move to the US to import drugs or steal our jobs.Like I said, it's a good movie. Usually one whom I've seen in glamorous roles, Marion Cotillard pulls off this waif-like role perfectly. Darius Khondji's cinematography gives the viewer the feeling of a truly grim existence. I recommend the movie.
Sergeant_Tibbs
For those that consider The Immigrant a 2014 film, Marion Cotillard is having a great year, and her joint awards for her performances in this and Two Days, One Night ostensibly culminated in an Oscar nomination. I'm not a fan of the Dardenne, but I can get fully on board with James Gray's beautiful film. She utterly bowled me over giving a delicate and devastating performance. Cotillard is an actress who can make her nuances shine with utmost sincerity and the tragedies and dilemmas she faces in The Immigrant offer her a platform like she's never had before. It's classical storytelling here, but Gray claims those archetypes for his own and the result is refreshing. Joaquin Phoenix gives a very interesting and conflicted performance as a man who's desires to help Ewa but instead drains her of her soul. Darius Knodji's bronze cinematography adds to the film's powerful eloquence especially in the final poetic shot. I must see more James Gray films especially if they have the same gravitas.8/10
Turfseer
Until I heard that James Gray based "The Immigrant" on recollections of his grandparents, I would have guessed this was an adaptation of an old melodramatic play that might have played on Broadway circa 1925. Gray's setting is New York City in 1921. His protagonist, Polish immigrant "Ewa," is just disembarking at Ellis Island when her sister, "Magda," is scooped up by immigration officials and placed in quarantine as she has tuberculosis. Ewa (Marion Cotillard) is marked for deportation due to rumors that she was a woman of "loose morals," on her passage to America.Her potential savior appears in the form of "Bruno" (Joaquin Phoenix), an owner of a burlesque house, who also pimps out his girls to men of means. Bruno appears to be in cahoots with corrupt officials on Ellis Island and when he meets Ewa who speaks decent English, he scoops her up and makes her a part of his act.Add in the neat early NYC 20s production design and we're ready for some possible excitement in the second act. Unfortunately Gray's "Ewa" can do nothing more than constantly bemoan her fate as a kept woman, regretting that she's unable to save her quarantined sister. The introduction of a love triangle as a second act, between Bruno and his magician cousin, "Emil" (Jeremy Renner), harks back to the old melodramas of yesteryear, and when Bruno stabs Emil to death out of jealousy over his affections for Ewa, it's hardly something to get excited about. David Denby of "The New Yorker," agrees that there's a lack of real passion in "The Immigrant's" second act: "In this movie, Phoenix turns himself inside out, but Cotillard's reserved performance doesn't move us. Bruno advances in his confused way, Ewa resists, and, despite Jeremy Renner's flickering presence, the movie becomes dour and repetitive. Looking at them, you finally think, Enough! Life must be elsewhere."Claudia Puig, writing in USA Today, concurs that there's something very wishy-washy about Ewa: "Meanwhile, Ewa is heartsick about being separated from her sister. Mostly what she conveys, however, is a not very credible passivity. She dutifully follows Bruno and believes him when he says he's the only one who can get her sister out of the infirmary. In other ways, she seems savvy and strong-willed, so it's hard to believe she can be so gullible."Puig also is troubled by Gray's inability to define Bruno's motivations: "Phoenix chews the scenery as Bruno, a man who alternates between smarmy courtesy and ruthless menace. But he never feels like a credible character. It's unclear whether director James Gray wants audiences to see him as tragic or merely sleazy. Renner remains a baffling cipher. Is Emil truly besotted with Ewa or just embroiled in a lifelong rivalry with his cousin?"Kyle Smith of the NY Post, also argues that Ewa's passivity contributes to the film's overall ennui: "Ewa is a representative for all of the poor and immigrant women of the time: She's simply unable to create a path for herself, and the pudding-thick atmosphere and sickly gaslit haze conjured up by Gray enhance the sense of an existence that's closed and stuck. Unfortunately for the movie, its story line suffers from the same fate; she's such a passive figure that the movie is more frustrating than anything else."Act III features the rather sentimental transformation of Bruno into a semi-mensch. He insists during his farewell conversation with Ewa that he planned to give all the money he had earned as a burlesque impresario to her, so that it could be used to bribe the Ellis Island officials and set Magda free. But since he's been relieved of his money by a coterie of nasty men in blue, it's not up to him to actually make Ewa happy. The deus ex machina of course is Ewa's aunt's philanthropy, somehow conveniently effected with little credible explanation (For the life of me, how is Ewa's aunt so easily able to come up with the money to give to Ewa, especially with her brute of a husband, watching over her?)After all the staid machinations, Mr. Gray would like us to marvel at Bruno's transformation, despite his tawdry past. While he's about to go to the cops and confess to Emil's murder, at this point, do we really care? I think not.Gray's film reminds one of a silent film from the 20s with added dialogue. It's a marvelous recreation of a bygone era replete with the heady atmosphere of those times. Nonetheless, Gray's decision to opt for a narrative that's as creaky as any forgotten potboiler from 1920s Broadway, it hardly bodes well for those of us who long for a little complexity when it comes to offerings on today's silver screen.
