Movie Review: "The Immigrant" (James Gray, 2014)

PHOENIX RISING by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix star in Mr. Gray's film

 

In the final scene of James Gray’s coming-to-America drama “The Immigrant,” Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix stand facing each other, inside shadowy building on Ellis Island.  There’s some space between them, but it’s quickly closed as Mr. Phoenix leans toward his co-star, his chin jutting outward weirdly.  “If you could lick my heart,” he snarls, “you’d taste nothing but poison.”

            I believed him.  There is no actor today who is as roughly animalistic as Mr. Phoenix; he’s like a fully grown tiger, and movie screens are cages that can barely contain him.  Yet in “The Immigrant,” he tempers his natural rage with utterly strange politeness.  His character, Bruno Weiss, may be a foul-tempered pimp, but he’s an unnervingly genteel one, even at one point sincerely referring to his prostitutes as his “family.”

            Among that family is Ewa (Ms. Cotillard), who has just journeyed from Poland (the year is 1921).  When the movie opens, she’s on Ellis Island, hoping to start a fresh, safe life with her sickly sister Magda (Angela Sarafyan).  But almost immediately, Magda is detained and Ewa is nearly deported.  Her only hope seems to be working for Bruno to earn the money needed to free her sister from the island infirmary.

            Can you imagine a more miserable story?  The movie may be coated in the beautifully gritty sheen that’s typical of Mr. Gray’s films (the cinematography is by Darius Khonji), but the story saddles each image with gruesome reality.  Things keep getting worse for Ewa; even a promising reunion with her Brooklyn-based aunt (Maja Wampuszyc) is ruptured by the inopportune arrival of the police.

            In the midst of this horror, Ms. Cotillard makes Ewa stoic, tough, and pained.  Her performance is fine, though I couldn’t help feeling that Mr. Gray wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.  Ewa’s chief role in the film is to suffer and beyond that, she doesn’t have any discernible personality.  In the end, it is always Mr. Phoenix’s mixture of mild manners and mad rage that commands Mr. Gray’s attention, and yours.

            Thus, for a time, “The Immigrant” seems like a clear-cut morality tale, with Ewa cast as a virtuous victim and Bruno playing her sinister benefactor.  And in the end, that remains partly true—after all, Bruno does turn out to be even more monstrous than he initially appears.  Yet you can’t help but feel drawn to Mr. Phoenix and the way his every move is undercut by a pained, barely concealed fury.  Even Ewa seems torn between anger and sympathy where this man is concerned.  “You are not nothing,” she tells him tearfully during a climactic moment, even though she’s just pounded him with her fists.

            That same scene contains the most moving image in the movie.  Ewa, even after all she’s been through, wraps her arms around Bruno and the camera stays close as she hugs him—we don’t see their faces, just a mesh of clothes and arms and hair.  And though that may not be in love, in the dirty and twisted world of “The Immigrant,” this affection is all that Ewa and Bruno have.