Director James Gray returns in his 2013 production of The Immigrant to one of his recurrent themes - the one that made him known in the first long feature film he made Little Odessa - immigration, and to his preferred background which features also in his debut but also in the more recent Two Lovers - New York. Actually his other well known feature film We Own the Night was not located too remotely as well. In all his last film we also enjoy the presence of Joaquin Phoenix, an actor that I highly appreciate. We can already speak about a cluster of works happening more or less in the same milieu, with a team of actors and a style of story telling that make it consistent. Not necessarily successful - to my taste at least.This story of two sisters arriving in New York in the 1920s, and their fight to remain in the New Promised Land and survive by all means could have been made in 1930, or 1960, or 1990. It would have looked a little different as technical means differ, but otherwise not too much seems to have changed. The 2013 version adds too little from an emotional point of view to really make a true emotional or social impact. Neither does the passionate and tragic love story between the pimp and the new innocent immigrant look too true. It starts as a story of mutual destruction, it continues as a tragic love triangle, it ends by destroying the charmer and the harmer in a too much expected way.If there is one actress who can play wonderfully melodrama today on screens, this is Marion Cotillard. She does exactly what is expected, and so does Joaquin Phoenix. This is not enough. Director James Gray knows how to tell a story on screen, but his style must overcome the clichés in order to free the good director we guess he is. Chaplin's film with the same name made almost 100 years ago still remains a stake of value hard to exceed.

Separated from her ill sister and facing deportation, a Polish immigrant is taken in by a burlesque show operator who may or may not have her best intentions at heart in this drama set in 1920s New York. The film holds no bars in depicting the difficulties of immigration as our disillusioned protagonist, played by Marion Cotillard, comes to accept an existence very different to what she once imagined. Cotillard's performance is rather multi-layered: simultaneously vulnerable and ruthless (resorting to stealing what she can), and simultaneously accepting of her fate and focused on achieving more. Joaquin Phoenix is also superb as the burlesque man with a breakdown scene near the end in which he finally drops all pretenses to reveal a beating human heart. Their situation is also complicated by Cotillard encountering Phoenix's estranged cousin, played by Jeremy Renner, and a love triangle develops that never quite clicks since we are unsure until the end whether Phoenix really loves her, and as it is never clear whether Renner really loves her either or just wants to make Phoenix jealous. Certainly, an animosity exists between the two cousins that the film does not explore in as much depth as it perhaps could have. Still, what the film does do well it does very, very well. It is quite rare to find a film with such a graphic insight into the harsh actual reality of the American Dream and Cotillard's character is very much one-of-a-kind. Torn between would-be saviours and false promises, she never once gives up hope, even if her own American Dream is decidedly different by the end.

James Gray co-wrote (with Richard Menello who had worked with Gray on his other films and who died in 2013) and directed this slow moving but insightful film about the immigration topic that swirls through the media at the present time. His previous films – 'Little Odessa', 'We Own the Night, 'The Yards' and 'Two Lovers' are similar in feeling – dark, many repeated actors, coloration of the film product. But THE IMMIGRANT reflects the history of us all – all of us in the USA being immigrants in our lives or our histories – and as such it is very much like being given access to a personal scrapbook of survival in a new land.The film opens in 1921 on Ellis Island. In search of a new start and the American dream, Ewa Cybulska (Marion Cotillard, superb!) and her sister Magda (Angela Sarafyan) sail to New York from their native Poland. When they reach Ellis Island, doctors discover that Magda is ill with tuberculosis, and the two women are separated. Ewa is released onto the mean streets of Manhattan while her sister is quarantined. Alone, with nowhere to turn and desperate to reunite with Magda, she quickly falls prey to Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), a charming but wicked man who takes her in and forces her into prostitution. And then one day, Ewa encounters Bruno's cousin, the debonair magician Orlando (Jeremy Renner). He sweeps Ewa off her feet and quickly becomes her only chance to escape the nightmare in which she finds herself. Bruno owns a men's club run by Belva (Dagmara Dominczyk) in which the girl's Bruno has 'saved' perform burlesque for the drinking men. In many ways Bruno is a caring a kind man but has a manic streak that colors the loves of everyone around him. He is the epitome of the immigrants who took (take?) advantage of frighten and desperate immigrants for money and power.The film is very slow, sort of a one-note song, but the acting is excellent and the cinematography by Darius Khondi captures the claustrophobic effect of living in secrecy and in less than suitable conditions. Though the film drags on a bit too long it does bring to our attention the trials of entering this country as an immigrant.

Until I heard that James Gray based "The Immigrant" on recollections of his grandparents, I would have guessed this was an adaptation of an old melodramatic play that might have played on Broadway circa 1925. Gray's setting is New York City in 1921. His protagonist, Polish immigrant "Ewa," is just disembarking at Ellis Island when her sister, "Magda," is scooped up by immigration officials and placed in quarantine as she has tuberculosis. Ewa (Marion Cotillard) is marked for deportation due to rumors that she was a woman of "loose morals," on her passage to America.Her potential savior appears in the form of "Bruno" (Joaquin Phoenix), an owner of a burlesque house, who also pimps out his girls to men of means. Bruno appears to be in cahoots with corrupt officials on Ellis Island and when he meets Ewa who speaks decent English, he scoops her up and makes her a part of his act.Add in the neat early NYC 20s production design and we're ready for some possible excitement in the second act. Unfortunately Gray's "Ewa" can do nothing more than constantly bemoan her fate as a kept woman, regretting that she's unable to save her quarantined sister. The introduction of a love triangle as a second act, between Bruno and his magician cousin, "Emil" (Jeremy Renner), harks back to the old melodramas of yesteryear, and when Bruno stabs Emil to death out of jealousy over his affections for Ewa, it's hardly something to get excited about. David Denby of "The New Yorker," agrees that there's a lack of real passion in "The Immigrant's" second act: "In this movie, Phoenix turns himself inside out, but Cotillard's reserved performance doesn't move us. Bruno advances in his confused way, Ewa resists, and, despite Jeremy Renner's flickering presence, the movie becomes dour and repetitive. Looking at them, you finally think, Enough! Life must be elsewhere."Claudia Puig, writing in USA Today, concurs that there's something very wishy-washy about Ewa: "Meanwhile, Ewa is heartsick about being separated from her sister. Mostly what she conveys, however, is a not very credible passivity. She dutifully follows Bruno and believes him when he says he's the only one who can get her sister out of the infirmary. In other ways, she seems savvy and strong-willed, so it's hard to believe she can be so gullible."Puig also is troubled by Gray's inability to define Bruno's motivations: "Phoenix chews the scenery as Bruno, a man who alternates between smarmy courtesy and ruthless menace. But he never feels like a credible character. It's unclear whether director James Gray wants audiences to see him as tragic or merely sleazy. Renner remains a baffling cipher. Is Emil truly besotted with Ewa or just embroiled in a lifelong rivalry with his cousin?"Kyle Smith of the NY Post, also argues that Ewa's passivity contributes to the film's overall ennui: "Ewa is a representative for all of the poor and immigrant women of the time: She's simply unable to create a path for herself, and the pudding-thick atmosphere and sickly gaslit haze conjured up by Gray enhance the sense of an existence that's closed and stuck. Unfortunately for the movie, its story line suffers from the same fate; she's such a passive figure that the movie is more frustrating than anything else."Act III features the rather sentimental transformation of Bruno into a semi-mensch. He insists during his farewell conversation with Ewa that he planned to give all the money he had earned as a burlesque impresario to her, so that it could be used to bribe the Ellis Island officials and set Magda free. But since he's been relieved of his money by a coterie of nasty men in blue, it's not up to him to actually make Ewa happy. The deus ex machina of course is Ewa's aunt's philanthropy, somehow conveniently effected with little credible explanation (For the life of me, how is Ewa's aunt so easily able to come up with the money to give to Ewa, especially with her brute of a husband, watching over her?)After all the staid machinations, Mr. Gray would like us to marvel at Bruno's transformation, despite his tawdry past. While he's about to go to the cops and confess to Emil's murder, at this point, do we really care? I think not.Gray's film reminds one of a silent film from the 20s with added dialogue. It's a marvelous recreation of a bygone era replete with the heady atmosphere of those times. Nonetheless, Gray's decision to opt for a narrative that's as creaky as any forgotten potboiler from 1920s Broadway, it hardly bodes well for those of us who long for a little complexity when it comes to offerings on today's silver screen.