REVIEW - THE IMMIGRANT

A warm visual glow envelops James Gray's cold classical melodrama, an attempt to contribute to the annals of an outmoded style of filmmaking that is nevertheless still celebrated today. Gray is not lacking in ambition, though perhaps therein lies his downfall: where his modern conceptions end and his selection of archaic conceptions take over is hazy, a haze that runs the whole film through, and largely into a dreary, sepia-tinged sludge. I was both entranced and amused by the aesthetic scheme, since Darius Khondji's cinematography is at times wondrous, but Gray's decision to utilise this oft-mocked style felt more like a replacement for any true, coherent style of his own, as he casts his net out wide enough to encompass all of his intentions, thereby rendering The Immigrant stolid and inert. And so one must marvel at Marion Cotillard, since she sees a greater depth to Gray's creation than I expect he ever did; his devotion to her is of enormous benefit to the film. A narrow narrative frame deprives The Immigrant of a feeling of importance, yet Cotillard deploys the full extent of her abilities as an actor of supreme talent, and conveys a vast landscape of profound emotion that supplants the need for a more developed context, or a closer examination of her supporting players. Gray supplies his two (semi-)leading men with a more conventional sense of life, since feuding family males remains where his interests lie, but this conventionality limits what actors Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner can achieve with their characters - Phoenix tries, as one might expect, but only succeeds in diverting his role off course, and it's tough to grasp exactly what purpose he serves by the end. So, though Cotillard is provided with little more than one note to churn out scene after scene, she treats this note as a foundation on which to elaborate to limitless end, and is consistently thus the one thing that rescues The Immigrant from descending into the dirge Gray desperately seems to want it to be.