A great classicist, James
Gray has often been called painterly, operatic, novelistic. It’s as if we
have forgotten what good cinema looks like, searching other media for a
comparison, assuming the heft and heart of art and literature is somehow
outside the movies’ grasp. Gray’s The
Immigrant, which premiered last year at Cannes and is just now hitting theaters, is a romantic tale that hides its monumental scale and subject in
plain sight, a subtle, soulful masterpiece that cuts to the very heart of the
American experience. Wrapping big themes in an intimate embrace, the film feels
both epic and personal. It not only reminds us of what film used to be, but also
of what it could be once again. A story of survival and redemption for the
characters, the movie surely accomplishes the same for a very specific,
straightforward kind of filmmaking that I haven’t seen in a very long time.
A mournful, mesmerizing meditation on the immigrant experience, the
movie opens on a slow zoom of the Statue
of Liberty shrouded in foggy mist, its back turned to the camera. From that
first moment, The Immigrant unfolds
in the foggy, misty gap between the promise the statue embodies and the harsh
realities newcomers encounter when that promise turns its back on them. Later
in the film, Lady Liberty will make a second appearance, this time as the main
character’s cabaret costume, a sad parody of the ideals represented by the
statue. The woman is asked why she came to America. “I want to be happy,” she
mouths gently, her voice breaking with infinite sorrow. In another show, a magician
levitates before the Ellis Island detainees, who are for the most part awaiting
deportation to their home lands, assuring them that anything is possible if
they believe—“The American Dream is waiting for you,” he says at the end of the
act. How appropriate that the pep talk comes in the middle of a con act.
