Sueños de libertad

I just finished this movie and wanted to leave a review, while the credits are still rolling.

I'm one of the harsher critics on IMDb, but I enjoyed The Immigrant. This is a dark film about Prohibition-era New York, and the trials of Eastern European immigrants who have come here in the hopes of a better life.

Like most good films, good and evil are blurred. We aren't asked to judge the characters, but rather to observe them as they are.

The plot is solid and the performances are impressive, particularly Marion Cotillard and Juaquin Phoenix.

"The Immigrant", James Gray's newest film, while retaining some of the gritty dark-crime dramatics of his previous work, feels like a radical departure. Mainly because its an Ellis Island-era period movie set 100 years ago, and because its observed through the eyes of a female protagonist and her struggle against permanent blight and the inherent depression of the situational times.

Fleeing the brutalities of Trotsky's Red Army, Polish Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and her sickly sister arrive in New York cira 1920. When her sister is quarantined and both are threatened with deportation, Ewa is taken notice and saved by the faux-sensitive brothell pimp Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) and blackmailed into prostitution. Just when Ewa may succumb to the sort of drab, bleak life that she was trying to allude, Bruno's cousin Orlando the Magician (Jeremy Renner) shows up and both men via their own quirky methods try to light a fire in the heart of the pretty foreigner.

In her best part since "Rust and Bone", Cotillard is Oscar worthy in a showy albeit poetic performance (made all the more impressive that she speaks Polish throughout most of it). Phoenix is superb as usual, as the repressed and impotent man who wants to think he's in charge. But Renner steals the show. Right when you think the movie is going to slide under the weight of the misery of its subject, his Orlando appears like a glowing gaslight of fun amongst the dim rooms and crowded corridors. Like his work in "American Hustle", its criminal that his spritely performance here will go unrewarded and under the radar.

Although the universal tale of Gray's film isn't exactly something we haven't seen before (from Kazan's bold "America, America" to Ron Howard's putrid "Far and Away") "The Immigrant" presents a rare and thoughtful experience, one in which we can learn something about the lives of long ago as well as our own.

The Immigrant has all the ingredients to be a blockbuster and an excellent movie: great actors, fantastic production, great atmosphere, historical settings, and a touching story about the harshness of immigration in the USA after the WW1 without sugar-coated BS. Yet, for whatever reason, the movie felt flat most of the time to me, and not touching despite the story being a priori very touching.

Phoenix is always great in whatever he does, and he's the only actor whose character I felt and believed to be real in this film. Marion Cotillard is really sweet but, despite the role being written for her, the dramatic coloratura of the script, speaking in Polish, and shedding the perfect tear, her acting feels flat, as if she had taken a muscular relaxant during the film; unfortunately, I didn't think her acting was coming from the heart and it didn't touch mine. I found Jeremy Renner miscast in his role, he has no chemistry with Cotillard on camera and he was never meant to be a rival of the always powerful Phoenix.

The script has no tempo, unfortunately, so it dragged me alone on a two-hour flat ride. You know, the movie is really sad and emotional, but it rarely moved me, intrigued me, or kept me waiting for what was coming next. The movie felt, depending of the times, clichéd, phony, overly melodramatic, a bit frigid, but mostly unfocused and confused, and that's always the director's fault.

Overall, this is a nice film to watch, but it deflates before it gets fully inflated. There are many things I liked about this film, truly, but nothing I really loved, unfortunately.

There is nothing new or surprising in the story: a poor young immigrant girl who is fresh-off-the-boat taken advantage of, and is sexually exploited by another survivor (just one step above in the food chain ladder) in the golden age of immigration in America.

The acting is good, but the script is quite poor and the direction merely goes through the motions of formal correctness without adding depth, or a true reflection, or a new insight on the matter.

The characters lack in complexity and reality; the revealing of social injustice is more a "homework making" of a formal outrage than a truly insightful exploration of human miseries.

It is an average film with minor hits and major misses which, in my opinion, will not make its way through history, even for easy-to-please audiences as the lovers of Hollywood movies.

James Gray's beautifully shot 1920s New York period drama about the American dream gone to seed for a Polish woman, never stumbles into soap opera melodrama and the film is actually restrained considering the heaps of drama thrown at this woman. Marion Cotillard gives a wonderful performance as the immigrant who finds herself exploited in prostitution and the script wisely never makes her blind to the fact that things will be quickly heading south for her - she's a strong, smart woman who's hostage to a miserable situation. Jeremy Renner makes the most of his small but pivotal role and is the only character who seems to be having a good enough time and he injects some munch needed energy into this story. It's Phoenix, whose shyster character is the most complicated, that never comes across convincing. And while Phoenix is never for a moment boring to watch and for the most part doesn't over act, his acting decisions seem too thought out and theatrical. While Cotillard, Renner and the rest of the cast give performances that feel natural and embody these characters, it always feels like Phoenix is acting. Though locations are minimal and the few exterior shots are usually in a tunnel, the period detail is convincing and it's a nice too see a period film actually shot on film instead of digital. The Immigrant is a good showcase for Cotillard's talents and despite its flaws, definitely worth a watch.