The Immigrant (James Gray, 2014)

[Altair]

Question: is the US release region free or the German release English friendly (Amazon lists English audio but what about Polish language scenes)?

[colinr0380]

The US Blu is Region A unfortunately. I'm not sure about the German Blu, but the scenes in Polish on the US disc have fixed theatrical subtitles rather than player generated ones, so they might be the same elsewhere.

[Pepsi]

There's also an Australian release available.

[colinr0380]

I've been reading a few reviews on the film since seeing it and especially liked Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's AV Club piece, particularly this mid-section:

In a lesser film, Ewa would be naïve and Bruno would be charming. He would deceive her into prostitution. Eventually, she would realize that he would never help her reunite with her sister, and thereupon come to understand that the American Dream is nothing more than a lie—a pimp’s come-on, or some other simplistic metaphor.

But in The Immigrant, Ewa is not naïve and Bruno is not charming. He is awkward and weak-willed. He regrets what he does for a living, but not enough to stop doing it. He cares about Ewa, but not enough to stop exploiting her. “I hate you, and I hate myself,” she says to him in a pivotal scene, yet the viewer gets the sense that she only half-means it.

...Again, in a lesser film, Ewa, Emil, and Bruno would form a love triangle. They don’t. Ewa doesn’t love Emil or Bruno, and it doesn’t seem like Emil or Bruno really love her either, though they try. They want to love her, because she represents an opportunity for redemption. Loving her is an impossible dream; they understand that it’s impossible, and are comforted by this impossibility because it proves that there is a bigger world just out of reach, something beyond dingy alleyways, peeling wallpaper, and drinking money. In The Immigrant, the American Dream is just that—a comforting impossibility.

I particularly liked the sense that there is no question of going back to Poland unless forcibly deported, as there is simply nothing left there to go back to. The "American dream" isn't really tarnished by this film, perhaps because Ewa doesn't display that sense of naive romanticism about the New World as mentioned above (the closest to that is perhaps the good night's sleep at the house of a relative), but the quarantined sister and indentured Ewa are trapped in a kind of holding area limbo before they can truly leave and begin their new lives. It is not worth even going to America if the sister is locked away, so Ewa has to become complicit, though never entirely passively complict. (She is annoyed at Bruno for getting everyone fired, who tells Emile to leave rather than confront, who calls the police on both Emile and Bruno when they start fighting, and so on. The problem is that the guys continue to feel it necessary to assert themselves, which keeps making everything far worse!)

It is perhaps like a strange (though far better!) period version of that Tom Hanks film, The Terminal!

By the way the description of the 'authentic spaces' of the world in the review also illustrates another important difference between The Immigrant and the far more heightened and stylised Naked Tango!

[Altair]

There's also an Australian release available.

Thanks for the advice - I've just received the Australian BD today for a rather reasonable amount - £12, inc, postage - off eBay. It's rather shocking that such a high profile film never had any release in the UK.

[therewillbeblus]

Question: is the US release region free or the German release English friendly (Amazon lists English audio but what about Polish language scenes)?

Does anyone have the German blu, who can comment on its quality and/or the above Q for English subs for non-English language scenes? It seems significantly cheaper than the US blu, so unless it's drastically different in extras or quality, I'd like to jump on it

[flexibleheart]

Oh, this movie.

"I need my moneh! It's for my see-ster." (repeat 45x)

The first reply that said Phoenix had never been better.....I strongly disagree. He's pretty bad in this (the last scene is unintentionally funny) and often looked visibly bored. He's said a couple times he didn't really want to be in this but likely did it as an apology for I'm Still Here overshadowing the Two Lovers press tour.

Cotillard is good but the film lets her down. You realize that the film was always really about Bruno, which is a big problem.

Two Lovers is still Gray's best by some distance.

[The Curious Sofa]

I feel pretty much the same. Two Lovers is one of my favourite movies of the 21st century but apart from a few isolated sequences, there isn't much else by Gray I care for.

[therewillbeblus]

I actually think Gray keeps getting better with every film, with the exception of Two Lovers which is tied with Ad Astra for his best

[flexibleheart]

I feel pretty much the same. Two Lovers is one of my favourite movies of the 21st century but apart from a few isolated sequences, there isn't much else by Gray I care for.

It's the only time he really got the script right. I've always found his dialogue particularly weak (hence my prior post) which is almost ironic since Gray is arguably the best "talker"/interview in the business.

I'd like to see him direct other people's scripts.