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| Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard (The Weinstein Company) |
Any film that takes as dour and humorless an
approach as James Gray’s The Immigrant
must rely especially on execution. Fortunately, Gray’s gorgeous vision and the towering
performances from Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix create an intimate cinematic experience second to none in this year’s crop. Gray’s approach
teeters on pretentious and melodramatic, but by just avoiding those pitfalls, The Immigrant explodes with red-blooded
passion. Its score and cinematography are sensationally classical, its actors
remarkably committed, and its story just small enough to make a profound
impact. The Immigrant begins by
fading in on an image of the Statue of Liberty far in the distance, and follows
up this opening shot with a powerful, haunting and expertly-controlled expression of the
American immigrant experience. A-