THE NEW YORK TIMES

MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE STATION AGENT' 

A Train Depot, More Dream Than Destination

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Published: October 3, 2003                      

"The Station Agent" played at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and it's a relief to see it finally released; it's the kind of appetizing movie you want to share with others. Fin (Peter Dinklage), with his low, rational voice and intense stare, has moved into the remote spot after inheriting the depot, a dingy yet lovely shack out of a Walker Evans photograph, from Henry (Paul Benjamin), his mentor and the owner of the model-train store where Fin works in mournful silence.

Fin is 4 foot 5 — he has no problem referring to himself as a dwarf — but Henry, with his sour expression and slack shoulders, seems even smaller, though he's of average height. The unperturbed air seems to take something out of him: he could be waiting to die.

Mr. McCarthy treats Fin's new life as if his protagonist were emerging from underwater and had to adjust to the onrush of aural assault. Much of this comes from Joe (Bobby Cannavale), the relentlessly friendly and talky Cuban who pulls up every day in his food truck to run what must be the loneliest retail location not staffed by the Maytag repairman. Hawking coffee and fanning up a cloud of busy, pushy and likable chatter, Joe elbows his way into the taciturn Fin's life.

Fin's obsession is trains, which he doesn't really want to talk about. He'd rather work with them, and with the depot he's been left what is essentially the world's largest model-train set. The station, though, is mostly deserted, and it provides an incomplete fantasy. For Fin the dream always seems half-empty at best.

The director plays up the amusing contrasts between the serene, diminutive Fin, whose dignity seems unassailable until he's finally ruffled, and the big, buffed Joe, whose unremitting volubility is cotton-candy charm. He's a puppy who can't help trailing after someone he adores, and he uses words to mark his territory; the pair's relationship is goofily enchanting.

Joe is aggressive simply because he takes up so much space, and "The Station Agent," which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, allows Mr. Cannavale to give his finest performance. There are depths of neediness and happiness coexisting in him, and he doesn't bother to separate the warring factions in this charismatic supporting turn.

Mr. Dinklage's generosity should also be noted; he can be a forceful actor. He proved his worth in Tom DiCillo's making-of-an-indie-film-disaster comedy, "Living in Oblivion." In that film he portrayed a clichéd dwarf in an imagined dream sequence and verbally burned a layer of skin and nerve endings off the movie-within-a-movie's director (Steve Buscemi), flaying him for his lack of imagination.

A movie about a dwarf certainly flirts with being cringe-worthy, at least in the abstract, but Mr. McCarthy deals with his creations as characters. What's most important about Fin is the detachment he imposes on himself, his resignation to loneliness. But his vulnerability becomes evident during a drunken rage in a tavern, when he shows why he keeps himself emotionally locked away. After being subjected to insults, he biliously shouts to gawkers in the bar, "Take a good look."

Joe's alone, too, and clings to the silent, brooding Fin as if he were a refrigerator magnet. When the grieving artist Olivia (Patricia Clarkson) literally barrels into the picture — she nearly runs over Fin with her car — "The Station Agent" takes on a deeper, more tantalizing shape. Ms. Clarkson has been delivering meaty, juicy plums to movies for several years; she's become the Barry Bonds of low-budget film.

Olivia is flushed with pain, and embarrassed by it. The power in Ms. Clarkson's performance comes from Olivia's recognizing parts of herself that she's been suppressing.

These three loners slowly melt into one another, but the relationship doesn't come easily to any of them. Their unspoken anguish says plenty, as does Fin's ability to provoke conversation from those who insert themselves into his circle. He clearly doesn't seek them out, except one. He does show some tenderness to a young visitor to his depot, a little girl, Cleo, played with unapologetic curiosity by Raven Goodwin. She's the one person Fin will deal with directly, and his patience tickles her; it compels her to spray him with questions.

This exception aside, Mr. McCarthy proves himself so crafty at making the unvoiced sentiments the heart of the film that the movie becomes shocking in moments when Fin vents his fury. If he weren't allowed the opportunity, however, you'd worry that "The Station Agent" might implode, folding in on itself in pent-up emotion.

Mr. McCarthy does allow the movie bigger scenes, providing a burst of contentment for the withdrawn Fin. In one, Joe drives next to a train, while Fin, a quiet smile on his face, catches the locomotive with his video camera. After that, it's a return to the depot, which is such a welcoming, ramshackle oasis that you think the producers might offer it on eBay one day. I'd buy it.

"The Station Agent" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has drug and alcohol consumption, sexual situations and a justified torrent of strong language from its angry protagonist.

THE STATION AGENT

Written and directed by Tom McCarthy; director of photography, Oliver Bokelberg; edited by Tom McArdle; music by Stephen Trask; production designer, John Paino; produced by Mary Jane Skalski, Robert May and Kathryn Tucker; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Peter Dinklage (Finbar McBride), Patricia Clarkson (Olivia Harris), Bobby Cannavale (Joe Oramas), Raven Goodwin (Cleo), Paul Benjamin (Henry Styles) and Michelle Williams (Emily).

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THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
REVIEW

Lives Meet at a Junction

‘The Station Agent’ imagines the unlikely yet inevitable coming together of three people.   It is deft, funny and engagingly performed.

By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer

People and porcupines, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer famously wrote, are very much alike. They want to stay close for warmth and companionship but they also maintain a certain distance to avoid pricking one another. The characters in “The Station Agent,” a quite wonderful new comic drama, fit that description exactly.

Written and directed by Tom McCarthy, an experienced actor and stage director making his behind-the-camera debut, “The Station Agent” did well at Sundance, taking the audience award, the Waldo Salt screenwriting award and a share of co-star Patricia Clarkson’s special prize for outstanding acting. But even that doesn’t say enough about the film.

For this sophisticated entertainment, made with a gift for character, is more than a Park City prizewinner. Its charming story of the delicate intersection of three highly individual lives is the kind of completely personal yet universal film that the festival and the entire independent movement came into being to celebrate. And it does it all in 88 deft and funny minutes.

Typical of “Station Agent’s” strength is that it makes its optimistic points about community, about the ways we’re drawn to each other almost in spite of ourselves, with people who sound in the abstract unlikely to come alive, let alone come together.

But the filmmaker McCarthy knew what he was doing. Having met his principals through his Manhattan stage experience, he wrote each part with a specific actor in mind, using his sense of what they could accomplish to create an elaborate tissue of playful interactions.

First among equals is Peter Dinklage, who brings charisma and contained emotion to the role of Fin McBride, a 4-foot, 5-inch loner whose great passion and escape in life is trains. Fin works in a hobby shop for model train buffs by day and spends his nights meeting with fellow enthusiasts and watching films they’ve taken of, yes, trains.

This zeal notwithstanding, Fin is not an outwardly passionate man. He’s a figure of formidable dignity not despite but because of his size. After having endured every joke, every look of disbelief, every nudging reference to “Fantasy Island,” Fin has made himself as solitary as any cloistered monk, creating a buffer that’s given him the distance necessary to survive.

When an inheritance leaves Fin with an abandoned train depot in rural Newfoundland, N.J., he immediately moves there looking not for something but for nothing. He just wants to be left alone. What he does not count on is Joe.

For parked outside Fin’s isolated depot is a lunch wagon manned by a gregarious young Cuban (Bobby Cannavale) who’s been sitting in for his ailing father for six weeks.

To call Joe chatty is like calling Fin small. Deprived of his usual level of companionship, the man is desperate for conversation, and he latches on to Fin like a Bible Belt minister out to save a soul. He is literally impossible to discourage, and it is a mark of the grace of Cannavale’s engaging performance that Joe manages to be ingratiating rather than irritating, someone you have to like even as he’s driving you crazy.

The way Fin meets Olivia (Clarkson), a regular customer of Joe’s, is too delicious to reveal.  A painter separated from her husband, she also doesn’t care to chat, but for a more serious reason: She’s still recovering from the death of her young son. Clarkson, always effective, gives Olivia the wistful tentativeness of a fragile person just barely holding it together.

Though the relationship among these three is the heart of “The Station Agent,” this film has no lack of other memorable characters, including Emily (“Dawson’s Creek’s” Michelle Williams), the town’s sylph-like librarian, and an inquisitive young person (“Lovely & Amazing’s” Raven Goodwin) who wants to know what grade Fin is in.

In fact, the key accomplishment of writer-director McCarthy and his actors is how finely these people are drawn. McCarthy has the best ear and eye for what makes people individual as well as an exact sense of how far he can go without jeopardizing empathy and believability. He knows how messy other people’s lives turn out to be when you get involved with them, and he understands not only the risks to yourself when you do, but the cost to yourself when you don’t.

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Ain’t It Cool News

“Quiz Kid” Donnie Smith’s “The Station Agent” Review

Where and When: I saw “The Station Agent” on Monday September 8th at 8:30 P.M. at the Uptown 2 theatre. The film’s director (Tom McCarthy) and three stars (Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale) were in attendance. When the film concluded, it received a standing ovation from the entire audience. Out of the fifty films I saw at the festival, this only happened twice. The other film was the “Revolution Will Not be Televised”. There was a semi interesting Q&A after the film with most of the questions congratulating the filmmakers and actors for a job well done. The funniest moment came when someone asked the actors what they had coming up next. With a wry smile, Peter Dinklage (a dwarf) said his next film was “Elf”. Some of you may have already seen him without knowing it if you caught the new “Elf” trailer. He’s the guy referred to as an angry elf by star Will Ferrell.

For Those Who Came in Late: “The Station Agent” tells the story of a man who loves trains but avoids personal relationships. When his only friend dies, he’s left an abandoned railway station house in New Jersey. There, he meets up with some of the townsfolk who are all lonely and isolated in their own way, and he slowly begins to reconnect with the world.

Non-spoiler Verdict: “The Station Agent” is a gem of a movie. It overcomes a premise that sounds a little mawkish and sentimental, and evokes genuine and well-earned emotion and laughter throughout its 90 minute running time. This is at heart a character study, and all three leads are marvelous, creating intricate portraits of lonely people who grow and change because of the effect they have on one another. “The Station Agent” is a perfect example of why I see 200 movies a year. On the surface, it looks like a movie that is eminently skippable, one that’s been done 100 times before. Instead, it’s a unique work of art that leaves you walking out of the theater feeling good. It doesn’t get any better than that.

In my review system (which includes 1.walked out. 2.should have walked out 3.vaguely enjoyable 4.good movie but not worth multiple viewings 5.excellent film -mulling over buying it 6.will buy it and watch again and again) “The Station Agent” receives a six rating. It’s definitely part of my cinematic universe.

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THE WASHINGTON POST

'The Station Agent': Head and Shoulders Above the Crowd
By Ann Hornaday

It's a rare and wondrous thing to be surprised at the cinema these days. Where are the truly original characters? Where are the story lines that lay legitimate claim to that ubiquitous and inflated adjective "quirky"? Where is the astonishment?

Right now, it's in "The Station Agent," a wise, funny, affecting little movie that delighted audiences at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is just now making its way to theaters. It was written and directed by an actor named Tom McCarthy, who made it as a vehicle for a bunch of his friends, whom most viewers probably will not have heard of. It's the kind of film that exists outside of genre or one-line descriptions. Its twists and turns are so subtle and unexpected that easy synopsis would be unfair. The best advice to filmgoers who appreciate smart, mature, humanist movies is, simply, Go. That, and Tell Your Friends.

Peter Dinklage stars as Finbar McBride, a train buff who is happily working in lonely quietude at a model-train store as the movie opens. When the death of a friend results in Fin inheriting a tiny train depot in rural New Jersey, the quiet, vaguely misanthropic young man sets off for a new life, presumably of quiet misanthropy in rural New Jersey.

Instead, Fin discovers that he has neighbors, whose lives have a persistent way of intersecting with his. Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a hot dog vendor who parks his truck in front of Fin's depot every morning, is determined that he and Fin will be best friends; Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a clumsy, preoccupied painter, almost runs the newcomer over -- twice -- and arrives on his doorstep apologetically bearing a bottle of bourbon. As this oddball threesome coalesces into something akin to a friendship, it's never clear whether Fin will entirely break through his carapace of hurt and mistrust, or whether he will retreat into his hermetic world of train schedule, pocket watch and comfortable, lonely silence.

It should be noted that Fin comes by his isolation honestly: He happens to be a dwarf, measuring 41/2 feet tall, and early in the movie the audience is shown the indignities that he suffers every day. Children make cruel jokes about Snow White as he walks by; a salesgirl doesn't see him over the cash register; the manager of a convenience store takes his picture while he's buying toilet paper. Fin, a handsome man with searching eyes and a sensuous, bow-shaped mouth, has learned over a lifetime that people will see him as exotic, even though, he explains, he's actually "just a simple, boring person."

McCarthy achieves a wonderful balance whereby Fin's height is simultaneously taken for granted and yet always at the problematic center of things. He's helped enormously by a strong, unsentimental performance by Dinklage, whose soft baritone and dark-eyed glower are both forbidding and seductive. Clarkson and Cannavale deliver equally accomplished performances as Fin's ragtag clique: Clarkson, with her porcelain delicacy and tinkling, musical voice, is at once heartbreaking and sharply funny, and Cannavale, who serves as the comic relief, also manages to serve as the movie's big, open-hearted moral catalyst. (Raven Goodwin, the Prince George's County native who was so lovely and amazing in "Lovely & Amazing," and Michelle Williams, from "Dawson's Creek," round out a terrific ensemble cast.)

With Clarkson and Dinklage, McCarthy has cast two of the contemporary screen's great faces, and he films them accordingly. His cinematographer used grainy 16mm film to photograph "The Station Agent," which results in a gauzy, unfocused look that fits the movie's gentle tone (in certain still, nighttime moments, Clarkson looks as if she's been painted by Gerhard Richter).

As a testament to vagrant, evanescent human connection, "The Station Agent" conveys a melancholy sort of joy that is rarely seen in conventional movies these days. Indeed, its emotions are probably too complicated for the nuance-free conventions of the major motion picture. In the cinema, as in all things, we can thank heaven for small miracles.

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THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - 4 of 4 stars!

Troubled Souls Find One Another
'Station Agent' has unusual story that quietly gets under the skin.
By Ruthe Stein

In the early years of railroads, the station agent was an integral part of a community. He hand-delivered the mail brought in by train, sold groceries at the depot and even cut the locals' hair.

Railroad lore like this is scattered throughout "The Station Agent," as touching and original a movie as you're likely to see this year. Its hero is a 4-foot-5-inch dwarf named Fin McBride, who is a repository of arcane information about the rails.

Fin (Peter Dinklage) moves into an old depot willed to him by a fellow train nut. But Fin is the opposite of a 19th century station agent. He's a loner who wants no contact with his neighbors. He takes solitary walks, waiting for trains to whiz by so he can clock them with his pocket watch. Decades of being the brunt of cruel jokes about his height have taught him to insulate himself from more hurt.

"The Station Agent" -- a remarkably assured first film from writer-director Tom McCarthy -- makes a case for Fin taking a giant leap back into life. Not much happens by conventional movie standards. Fin meets Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), an artist grieving over the accidental death of her young son. Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a chatty hot dog vendor, imposes himself upon the two. At first, his noisiness disturbs them. But they sense he's a good guy, for all his bluster. The trio's budding friendship illustrates the importance of being able to tell good people from bad.

McCarthy wrote the parts with these actors in mind, and his instincts proved right. His star had been stuck in supporting roles, most memorably in "Living in Oblivion," where he gives an impassioned speech about the unfairness of dwarfs always being cast in dream sequences. Dinklage, who has large, expressive eyes and a Darth Vader-deep voice, proves in "Station Agent" that he can carry a movie. He's particularly powerful in a scene where Fin, unable to control his anger at staring bar patrons, gets up on a stool and shouts for everyone to take a good look at him. Dinklage also can be sexy. When a woman in town becomes attracted to Fin, it doesn't seem weird or patronizing, because we see what she sees in him.

Clarkson, the reigning queen of the indies, conveys Olivia's incomprehensible loss in small ways, such as her distracted response to everyday situations. She meets Fin when she almost runs him over twice. Cannavale has the showy role, and he plays it big. His Joe is a life force, whether on the phone with his ailing father or spontaneously playing with neighborhood kids.

Apparently McCarthy, in his years as an actor, paid close attention to what goes on behind the camera. With an economy of shots, he captures the desolation of a town bypassed by progress. There are unexpected images that stay with you, like Joe's foot reaching out to the makeshift stool on which Fin's feet rest, while Fin defends his turf.

"Station Agent" has overtones of Carson McCullers. But McCarthy resists making his characters so weird that they lose their humanity. As Fin puts it, "It's really funny the way people see me and treat me because I'm actually just a very simple boring person." The movie shows us that Fin is much more than that while arguing for his right to be as boring as the next guy.

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