Richard Jenkins is an actor who can move his head half an inch and provide the turning point of a film. That happens in "The Visitor," where he plays a man around 60 who has essentially shut down all of his emotions. A professor, he has been teaching the same class for years and cares nothing about it. He coldly rejects a student's late paper without even enquiring about the "personal problems" that made it late. He makes an elderly piano teacher figure out for herself why she will not be needed again. His lips form a straight line that neither smiles nor frown.

He is forced to travel from his Connecticut campus to New York, to present an academic paper he co-authored. At least he is honest. Protesting the assignment, he tells a colleague he agreed to put his name on the paper as a favor, has not read it, is not competent to present it. He has to go anyway.

He keeps an apartment in Manhattan. Lets himself in. The naked African girl in his bathtub screams. Her boyfriend appears from somewhere. The interlopers are ready to call the police when he explains it is his apartment. They'd been renting it from a crafty opportunist. These "roomers" are Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), from Syria, and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira), from Senegal. They immediately pack to leave. He sees them out, then appears at the top of the stairs to tell them they can stay the night. During the film, he will change his mind and appear at the stair-top three times, each time crucial.(www.130q.com)

Tarek is a virtuoso on an African drum. Walter's late wife was a famous pianist. He loves music, but has failed at learning the piano. One day Walter is walking through Washington Square Park and hears two young black boys drumming on the bottoms of plastic buckets. He stops to listen. After awhile his head begins to move side to side, half an inch at a time, in response to the rhythm. There you are.

Of course the film, written and directed by Tom McCarthy, is about a great deal more -- about illegal U.S. residents and stupid bureaucrats and drums and love and loss. A fourth major character appears, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), who is Tarek's mother and lives in Michigan. She hopes to help her son after he is arrested in an innocent subway incident and threatened with deportation. Walter has already hired a lawyer. He's no bleeding heart, makes no speeches, barely displays emotion, but now for the first time since his wife died, he is feeling things deeply.

This is a wonderful film, sad, angry, and without a comforting little happy ending. But I must not describe what happens, because the whole point of serious fiction is to show people changing, and how they change in "The Visitor" is the film's beauty. So much goes unsaid, and unseen. Events in Walter's professorial job happen off-screen. We are left to listen to the silences and observe the spaces.

All four actors are charismatic, in quite different ways. Hiam Abbass is one of those actresses who respects small gestures; she knows that when a good cook is using an unfamiliar salt-shaker, she shakes the salt first into her hand, and then throws it into the pot. And she has other small gestures here that are much more fraught with meaning. Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira, as a musician and a jewelry-maker, are young, in love and simply nice people. The less complicated they are, the better the characters work. And as Walter, Jenkins creates a surprisingly touching, very quiet, character study. Not all actors have to call out to us. The better ones make us call out to them.

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2001年7月，时任美国总统的小布什在墨西哥总统福克斯的请求下，决定给300万墨西哥非法移民颁发了永久居留权的绿卡。7月10日，在纽约埃利斯岛出席移民入籍仪式时，小布什曾自信满满地发表过一篇现在看起来相当扯淡的讲话，他认为移民问题并非美国一个亟待解决的问题，而这也正是一个自信和成功国家的标志。一个多月以后，小布什就为自己的太过于自信而付出了代价，本拉登的几架飞机在撞向世贸中心的一刻，同时也把移民问题同国际反恐紧紧地联系在了一起。

影片《不速之客》就是以“后911”时代下的纽约为背景，讲述了这个号称民族熔炉的美利坚在“911”后加强对非法移民的管制的故事以及其中法律与人性之间的深层关系。沃尔特是一位丧偶的大学教授，几十年来生活如一日，同样的课程教了20年而毫无改变，一本书写了很久还无法完成，发表的论文却还是别人写的，自己只是个挂名作者，儿子原居大洋彼岸的伦敦并且与自己关系疏远，对于沃尔特来说，生活无非就是今天复制昨天，明天复制今天这么简单的一成不变。而一次阴差阳错的意外却改变了这个心如死水的老头的生活。沃尔特因为一次会议而回到离开已久的纽约，却发现自己的公寓里来了两位“不速之客”塔瑞克和扎娜，两人皆来自第三世界国家（叙利亚和塞内加尔）的非法移民。因为音乐的交流使得他们很快成为了朋友，而音乐也为沃尔特沉闷的生活打开了一扇窗。然而塔瑞克在一次乘地铁时被警察抓住，并移交移民局拘留而驱逐出境。

影片刚开始用了相当的篇幅来描述沃尔特的生活状态：一成不变的死水般的生活与对人的疏离关系。虽然身为经济学教授，但二十年一成不变的教学生涯让他再也找不到任何意义，他尝试学钢琴，或许只是为了纪念过世的妻子，但却没坚持下来而半途而废。他没有深交的朋友，怯于尝试新的事物，与人的交谈总是小心谨慎，却总是尴尬而冷淡的。沃尔特这个人物身上体现着美国大多数中产阶级都会面临的情感危机，他们或许物质生活很宽裕，但是精神生活却一片荒芜，这些人都希望通过某一种新奇刺激的事物以寻求新的突破，从凯文·斯派西眼中的漫天玫瑰开始，中产阶级危机就逐步成为电影中习惯性话题。沃尔特这种枯燥的生活在他遇到塔瑞克后被彻底地颠覆，兴趣点也由较为保守拘谨严肃的古典音乐变成了充满热情活力与奔放的非洲鼓，从与人的疏离到为着一个不速之客而四处奔走。沃尔特在影片的角色可以说是美国社会中人情的漠化与生活的异化的缩影，这些人对生命似乎已经完全失去了新的期待，只是不断地重复着最低限度的机械式的生活。这也看得出导演对美国中产阶级危机状态的独到观察：这些位于社会中上阶层的人们过着如沃尔特这样的优质生活，在社会地位与经济地位上都有某种程度上的成就，然而他们却过着犹如死人一般的生活。

与沃尔特这种死人般的生活形成鲜明对比的便是塔瑞克，他象征的是一种对生命的热情与自由的向往：他擅长的非洲鼓展现着这种无拘无束的热情奔放。他对于美国这种民族熔炉的自由的向往便是通过他对于自由女神这个景点的喜爱得以体现。片中塔瑞克的女友扎娜带着塔瑞克的母亲和沃尔特在船上遥看自由女神，但值得讽刺的是，面对着这样一尊象征着自由民主与平等的雕像，对其充满着无限向往的塔瑞克却被关在缺乏人权观照的拘留所中。塔瑞克所受到的待遇与这尊自由女神像诠释出，一个原本对未来充满希望与期待的生命，却受到美国政府无情的压制，将这股热情的光辉囚禁在国家机器这样一个冰冷的牢笼里。导演以一种批判性的眼光去审视在“后911”时代打着反恐的旗号对大批移民的毫无人性的待遇。当然，导演的意图并非在于以一个没有犯罪史的非法移民为主角拍出一部美国版的“躲猫猫”来，他的意图仅仅在于通过这样有一个耐人寻味结尾的故事去表现这个号称全世界最民主最自由国家的社会僵化，以及法律与人性磨擦问题。

片中当沃尔特来到拘留所探望塔瑞克时，镜头刻意给到了贴在墙上的一张宣传美国移民的海报，上面赫然写着：Immigration is the power（移民就是力量）。镜头刻意捕捉到墙上的这张海报，以一种反讽的方式表现出这些口号的虚伪与谎言。塔瑞克虽然是非法移民，但却不表示他可以失去作为“人”存在的价值，而美国这个自称最人道的国家在冷酷地处理这些非法移民的问题上所表现出来的非人道也是导演所予以批判的，他以这些角色间的情感关系，去对比美国政府的冷漠与僵化。

影片的结尾颇有些耐人寻味的味道——虽然沃尔特等人不辞辛劳四处为了塔瑞克而奔走，然而他却终究遭到驱逐出境。母亲也决定回国寻找儿子，尽管他们可能永远也不会回到美国了，但母亲与沃尔特在机场的最后道别，淡出的镜头带到了悬挂的巨幅星条旗，然后慢慢虚焦，这个镜头再次让我想起了移民拘留所墙上那则“移民就是力量”的广告。

尽管《不速之客》反映的是美国的社会问题，然而透过此片人性情感与僵化的体制的磨擦，我们依然可以从中看到此片中对于国家与社会、社会与个人之间关系的普遍意义，从而联想到我们社会中的类似问题。对于我们正在努力创建的“河蟹社会”，是否也可以理解为美利坚那种自称“最民主最公平”的另一种表述呢？但是问题是，在如今这个到处都爬满河蟹的水沟里，对于那些外来者农民工来说，他们是否真正享有足够的社会福利与平等的人权了呢？当我们去到zf机构办事的时候，是否依然会碰到那些吃着皇粮办事效率却极为低下的公务员对你的怠慢与不耐烦呢？

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