The Immi­grant

Oh James Gray… Who should I read, what should I watch, what intel­lec­tu­al peak should I ascend in order to under­stand your pur­port­ed film­mak­ing genius? His soporif­ic lat­est, The Immi­grant (née Low Life, which is pos­si­bly a more apt title), is a gauzy-lensed, ultra-earnest tale of doomed romance in a snow-globe ren­der­ing of 1920s New York.

Mar­i­on Cotillard’s sad-eyed Pol­ish migrant Ewa is escap­ing the Great War and is giv­en a help­ing hand by the shady, bowler-hat­ted Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix, play­ing almost exact­ly the same char­ac­ter as he did in Gray’s Two Lovers) when dock­ing at Ellis Island. Her sis­ter is interned in a closed hos­pi­tal upon their arrival due to her tuber­cu­lo­sis, and Ewa is forced to decide whether she wants to accept Bruno’s appar­ent­ly benign offers of work, board and cash in order to assist her ail­ing sis.

The film is alien­at­ing­ly solemn and emo­tion­al­ly mud­dled, its cen­tral rela­tion­ship rarely com­ing across as either con­vinc­ing or sin­cere. The eth­i­cal quan­daries faced by Cotil­lard lack any kind of sat­is­fy­ing ambi­gu­i­ty, as her unflag­ging devo­tion to her sis­ter means that we nev­er once believe that she might swerve from her stol­id con­vic­tions. Dra­mat­i­cal­ly, too, the machi­na­tions unfold in a series of hack­neyed and con­trived twists, where rev­e­la­tions only ever sur­face via hand­i­ly over­heard con­ver­sa­tions, through par­tial­ly opened doors and via char­ac­ters shim­my­ing up fire exits. This crass dra­matur­gy only serves to reduce the lyri­cism and inten­si­ty of the con­ver­sa­tions between Ewe, Bruno and white-knight third par­ty, Emil (Jere­my Renner).

Also, Gray’s roman­tic real­ist mode offers a take on the US immi­grant expe­ri­ence which sug­gests that holy inno­cents with a good face and vul­ner­a­ble demeanour will be scooped up on a wave of admi­ra­tion and char­i­ty. The film wipes its hands of any polit­i­cal sub­text, to the point that its cen­tral sto­ry needn’t have been told in the stranger-in-a-strange land con­text. It’s not that Ewa’s sit­u­a­tion isn’t dire, it’s that Gray doesn’t seem to know how to com­mu­ni­cate this intan­gi­ble prison in which she’s found her­self beyond hav­ing his cam­era linger on her con­stant­ly-deject­ed expression.

The for­mu­la­tion and main­te­nance of fam­i­ly remains an inte­gral theme to Gray’s oeu­vre, and The Immi­grant takes place at a time when fam­i­lies are scat­tered between con­ti­nents and fall apart at the hands of mil­i­tant self-preser­va­tion. The ​“fam­i­ly” Ewa joins as part and par­cel of Bruno’s broth­el is nev­er cap­i­talised on beyond a sin­gle tan­ta­lis­ing bath-house scene which sug­gests that Ewa is just a sin­gle link in an infi­nite chain of woe. Her fel­low pros­ti­tutes remain back­ground padding, respond­ing apa­thet­i­cal­ly to Bruno’s obvi­ous pref­er­en­tial treat­ment towards Eva. The film’s final rev­e­la­tion also comes as lit­tle sur­prise, damp­en­ing the taper on some poten­tial­ly very grand emo­tion­al fireworks.

Gray has clear­ly attempt­ed to make a movie whose dynam­ics are root­ed in clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing, but in doing so has made his own work look defi­cient by com­par­i­son. He lacks the pas­sion and verve of some­one like Ter­ence Davies who is able to fil­ter through the uni­ver­sal poet­ics of anti­quat­ed mate­r­i­al. And in terms of grap­pling with the exploita­tion that women can face when arriv­ing in unknown lands and opt­ing to con­sort with strange men, this is vast­ly infe­ri­or to Lars Von Trier’s Dogville.

Some are hail­ing the film a mas­ter­piece. Either I’ve entire­ly missed a dif­fer­ent, coher­ent and head­i­ly roman­tic mas­ter­work – I’m not see­ing the stu­pen­dous for­est for all the with­ered, crooked trees – but this movie left me utter­ly cold.