FILM REVIEW: “THE IMMIGRANT”
Imagine if Roman Polanski were to reimagine a Charlie Chaplin two-reeler. (I know, you are all sitting there, squeezing your eyes shut , visualizing this.) So, instead of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, it would be more like boy meets girl and girl gets killed, or boy gets killed…or worse. And so it is with “The Immigrant.”
“The Immigrant” takes place in New York’s Lower East Side around the end of the first World War, in a city where every cop is a criminal, but none of the sinners are saints. It is the story of a young Polish immigrant who will do anything (yes, ANYTHING) to get the money needed to pry her sister off and out of Ellis Island, the man who loves her, yet pimps her out, and the other man who loves her, who does not seem to fear her pimp’s psychopathic rage until it is far too late.
It is a sad and sordid story that makes one wonder just what our grandparents actually had to do to make ends meet down on Hester Street.
My only criticism is that the filmmaker (or cinematographer, or set designer: I have no idea who is culpable…I mean “responsible”) seems to think that no one, prior to the rise of GE, had light in their homes. Yes, prior to the widespread use of light bulbs, there was no sun, no one used lanterns or candles and no one opened the window shades. And everyone wore dark clothes. Our bubbees and zaydas stumbled around in the dark.
The film takes place in the past and is trying to make associations with our memories of the past which are largely based on old, dark photos. Got it, let us move on. Let there be light.
Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner are as good as you would expect them to be and the film, while dour, is worth seeing. Bring a candle.
