The Station Agent

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The Station Agent

Original poster
Directed by Thomas McCarthy
Produced by Robert May
Mary Jane Skalski
Kathryn Tucker
Written by Thomas McCarthy
Starring Peter Dinklage
Patricia Clarkson
Bobby Cannavale
Michelle Williams
Music by Stephen Trask
Cinematography Oliver Bokelberg
Editing by Tom McArdle
Distributed by Miramax Films
Release date(s) October 3, 2003
Running time 88 minutes
Language English
Budget $500,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $8,679,814 (worldwide)

The Station Agent is a 2003 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Thomas McCarthy. McCarthy's script about a man who seeks solitude in an abandoned train station in Newfoundland, New Jersey won him the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Finbar McBride, a quiet, withdrawn, unmarried man with achondroplasic dwarfism, has a deep love of everything related to railroads. He works in a Hoboken model train hobby shop owned by his similarly silent friend Henry Styles. Because he feels ostracized by a public that tends to make fun of his size, Fin keeps to himself.

The train station used in the movie.

Henry dies unexpectedly, and Fin learns he left him a piece of rural property with an abandoned train depot on it. He moves into the old building hoping for a life of solitude, but he quickly finds himself reluctantly becoming enmeshed in the lives of his neighbors. Joe Oramas, a thirty-year-old Cuban American, is operating his father's roadside snack truck while the man recovers from an illness, and Olivia Harris is a forty-year-old artist trying to cope with the sudden death of her young son two years earlier and the ramifications it has had on her marriage to David, from whom she is separated. Cleo is a young African American girl who shares Fin's interest in trains and finally convinces him to lecture her class about them. Emily is the local librarian, a young woman dismayed to discover she is pregnant by her ne'er-do-well boyfriend.

Joe, relentlessly upbeat and overly talkative, soon cracks through Fin's reserve. The two begin to take daily walks along the tracks, and when Olivia gives Fin a movie camera to film the passing trains, Joe pursues them in his truck while Fin captures them on film. The three forge a tentative friendship that is threatened when Olivia descends into a deep depression. Meanwhile, Emily seeks solace from Fin, who slowly is realizing interaction with other humans may not be as unpleasant as he thought.

[edit] Production

According to screenwriter/director Thomas McCarthy's commentary on the DVD release of the film, it was shot on a shoestring budget in a limited amount of time. Locations used included Lake Hopatcong, Dover, Hibernia, Rockaway, Hoboken, and Newfoundland in New Jersey and Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and the San Sebastián Film Festival before going into limited release in the US on October 3, 2003. Playing on three screens, it grossed $57,785 on its opening weekend. The film eventually earned $5,739,376 in the US and $2,940,438 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $8,679,814. [1]

[edit] Cast

[edit] Critical reception

Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times observed, "Tom McCarthy has such an appreciation for quiet that it occupies the same space as a character in this film, a delicate, thoughtful and often hilarious take on loneliness . . . it's the kind of appetizing movie you want to share with others." [2]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said, "[T]his is a comedy, but it's also sad, and finally it's simply a story about trying to figure out what you love to do and then trying to figure out how to do it . . . It is a great relief . . . that The Station Agent is not one of those movies in which the problem is that the characters have not slept with each other and the solution is that they do. It's more about the enormous unrealized fears and angers that throb beneath the surfaces of their lives." [3]

Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "as touching and original a movie as you're likely to see this year" and "a remarkably assured first film." [4]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said, "Tom McCarthy has a gift for funny and touching nuances . . . The three actors could not be better. Huge feelings are packed into this small, fragile movie. It's something special." [5]

James Christopher of The Times stated, "The brilliance of Peter Dinklage’s performance as the ironclad loner is that he doesn’t much care. Yet there’s something deeply affecting about his stoicism and suspicion that has nothing to do with artificial sweeteners, Disney sentiment, or party political broadcasts on behalf of dwarfs. Dinklage just gets on with his performance like an actor who can’t understand why he’s got the lead role. It’s this tension between the film and the unwilling Romeo that makes The Station Agent such a hypnotic watch." [6]

[edit] Awards and nominations

[edit] References

  1. ^ BoxOfficeMojo.com
  2. ^ New York Times review
  3. ^ Chicago Sun-Times review
  4. ^ San Francisco Chronicle review
  5. ^ Rolling Stone review
  6. ^ The Times review

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_Agent"
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