How did I get here? What happened to me that this is what my life has become? How do I find my way and some hope leading toward a bright future?
For many Europeans at the turn of the 20th Century, the answers to those questions lied across the Atlantic Ocean on the shores of America. And American films, even those period pieces that have explored the hardship of immigration, are seduced by the allure of The American Dream.
Director James Gray uses this backdrop to explore those questions on universal terms. In “The Immigrant,” coming to America means being stuck in a state of purgatory, being without hope or happiness and always fighting for survival. It’s a film about being lost, and not only in America.
The film starts as Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and her sister Magda are arriving at Ellis Island from Poland. Magda is immediately swept out of line to the infirmary for treating tuberculosis, and Ewa is about to be deported after being accused of being a “woman of low morals” while on board the ship.
We see none of her time back home or on the ship, and what exactly a “woman of low morals” means is not readily explained. But here Ewa is, stuck in Ellis Island about to be deported without her sister and wondering how she wound up in this mess in the first place. Immigrant or not, this feeling is not unique to Ewa. Continue reading “The Immigrant”