"The Academy Awards' compass is so fucked at this point that even substantive period dramas can go unnoticed entirely, a reality Oscar pro Harvey Weinstein surely accounted for when he decided to damn James Gray's latest to limited distribution hell. This manoeuvre is a shame not because The Immigrant needed the ever diminishing distinction of awards' season recognition, but because it's a film that simply should've found a bigger audience; the kind that too commonly gets 'arthouse' foisted upon it because that's the only place it's allowed to play, but that bares closer resemblance to a classic Hollywood filmmaking that the oblivious Academy voters continue to insist doesn't exist anymore. In particular, Gray, whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia, draws from a studio era rich with filmmakers exerting European sensibilities onto a still-young nation's art form. His heroes are directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese not because his filmography broadly occupies the same genre and geographic territory as their breakthroughs but because cultural heritage informs their characters' experiences in a country that gradually tries to subsume them into its own identity.
"These themes have never been reflected more sharply in Gray’s own work than they are in The Immigrant, the director’s sumptuous mirror box of American hopes and disillusionments. Set in 1920s New York, it's the story of Ewa (Marion Cotillard), an unmarried Polish refugee of the Great War who's pulled out of line at Ellis Island after her sister shows symptoms of a possible lung disease. Another immigrant, Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), uses his influence to save Ewa from a fate of deportation, but the price is a series of painful compromises in pursuit of that ever-elusive American dream: to be happy. Also introduced is a suave magician (Jeremy Renner), who likewise courts Ewa, challenging the lies on offer of his cousin Bruno with his own promises of a better life. But Gray elevates the stuff of a standard love-triangle melodrama to something momentous: a rich tapestry of American iconography stripped of its majesty (Ewa plays Lady Liberty in Bruno's burlesque show) as characters begin to resemble less the weight of their own moral convictions and failings than those of an entire nation. Crucially, Gray is as much concerned with the intimate implications of this parable as he is the broad ones. More than anything, The Immigrant is about gestures of forgiveness, understanding and affirming individual self-worth—a stirring rebuke to America's tradition of human commodity. Harvey and Oscar never did deserve it." ~ Sam C. Mac
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