The Visitor is about finding one’s place, struggling to maintain it, and then being forced to do the inevitable. It would just be another human tragedy if it wasn’t for the presence of Walter, whose assistance in the struggle adds a poignant dimension to the tragedy unfolding.
It’s never clear if at any point Walter thinks there is little hope for the immigrants he is helping but what’s clear is that reaching out to empathize with these people has done more for him than any piano lesson could have ever done.
There’s plenty of truth in the scenes inside the detention center, but the one scene most Americans should have little trouble identifying with is the dinner scene after Walter takes Mouna to “The Phantom of the Opera.”
During the dinner, in a moment where Walter seems to feel like he is worthless in comparison to people like Mouna, Zainab, and Tarek and confesses, “I pretend. I pretend that I’m busy, that I’m working, that I’m writing. I’m not doing anything.”
The scene is a moment of revelation for Walter and Mouna. It is now clear little separates the two. The work Walter has claimed to be doing along with the trepidation which Mouna has been experiencing seems to be all but nonexistent.
After Walter admits he does not know what he wants to do, Mouna says, “I don’t know. It’s kind of exciting not to know.”
The truth behind that phrase is that it Mouna knows it would be nice not to know that her stay in America will come to an abrupt end yet Mouna knows being in America is a privilege, one that in this world can be lost forever at any moment (and so does Tarek and Zainab).
The film shows that people like Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna will do anything for a home that brings security even if that that anything means taking the journey to America to fight for a place in American society. It also shows that people like Walter will have two homes and never be satisfied with a life awash in routine, dreariness, and monotony.
The audience sees it does not have to keep pretending. People who step outside their confined surroundings can make connections that will make them people they will be proud to be until the day they die.
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