James Gray
C'era una volta a New York

Immigration, an ever-relevant topic. "C'era una volta a New York" (original title "The Immigrant") is a work that can help better understand not the phenomenon itself, but the struggles of those who out of necessity (but also choice) find themselves living in another world, different from anything they were accustomed to. New Yorker James Gray, in his fifth feature film, could only tell his New York and his America, always a world of arrivals and departures and a melting pot of endless cultural diversities. In this case, Ewa Cybulska (a splendid Marion Cotillard) arrives from Eastern Europe, from Poland, along with her sister, who is forced to remain in quarantine at Ellis Island hospital due to tuberculosis. She needs care and money, and finding a job becomes essential. Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) steps forward to help her in this goal, leading her to become a prostitute, a fate common to many women who reached the States in the early years of the twentieth century.

Gray continues along the lines of "Two Lovers" staying within the realm of sentimental drama but adding a historical backdrop. There is nothing of the noir soul of titles like "Little Odessa" or "The Yards." With Ewa's story, Gray wants to portray the twisted world of a bleak and filthy New York as rarely seen in period narratives. He is aided in this by a sepia-toned photography played entirely on candlelight and "warm" interiors. A work that at the very least deserved an Academy nomination. This chromatic background is perfect for embedding the stories of the various characters and their struggles. Ewa does what she does because she has to help her sister after being rejected by the family who was supposed to welcome her in New York, Bruno and his self-destructiveness barely mitigated by his love for Ewa, or the magician Orlando (Jeremy Renner), charming to Ewa but decidedly less so for his cousin Bruno. The conflicts between these characters reflect those within a disaggregated society, desperately trying to drag itself forward beyond hardships where the conditions of subsistence are common to those who have just landed and those who exploit the newcomers to make money. The great American dream starts from those apartment corners where everyone could buy their fleeting happiness for a few pennies and from the illusion of the exploiters that all this would truly bring wealth and prosperity.

Behind the splendor of formal refinement, "The Immigrant" is actually the usual extremely classic film by Gray, both in directorial style and timing management. It is probably his most classic film, tout court. It is also so in the screenplay, which intertwines the feelings of three different characters, following the pattern of countless examples on the matter. However, the script does not have the strength to take off and leaves open nebulous situations that hold back a film that suffers from the ballast of unspoken things, such as the ambiguous relationship that develops between Cotillard and Renner. In hindsight, it seems more of a ploy to explode Phoenix's character than a coherent progression toward an outcome that never arrives. The formal refinement and a Gray contained in his virtuosities make up for a plot with several dull moments.

"C'era una volta a New York" is a great visual fresco of one of the most tormented moments in America's history, emerging from the Great War to touch the restrictions of Prohibition and heading toward the abyss of the Great Depression. Gray's work highlights this impending decay, both in tone and in the fate he assigns to his characters, all defeated except one. Again, the ending sublimates what was somehow previously telegraphed, removing magic and drama and also affecting the (once again excellent) work of Joaquin Phoenix, which reaches its peak right at the end. But we could say it is a bit of all Gray's cinema that ends up being "static," in the search for directorial classicism and an emphasis too laden on the characters (a bit of a recurrence in his cinema, from which "We Own the Night" is saved). All these complications have relegated him to that cinema that grants you big names but not the big audience. Not that this is always a bad thing, far from it. But now on his fifth film (and with "The Lost City of Z" on the way), James Gray leaves the impression of someone who doesn't have the hands to deliver that film that goes "beyond," as his debut "Little Odessa" instead held promise of.

6.5