The Station Agent
| The Station Agent | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Tom McCarthy |
| Produced by |
Mary Jane Skalski Robert May Kathryn Tucker |
| Written by | Tom McCarthy |
| Starring |
Peter Dinklage Patricia Clarkson Bobby Cannavale Raven Goodwin Paul Benjamin Michelle Williams |
| Music by | Stephen Trask |
| Cinematography | Oliver Bokelberg |
| Edited by | Tom McArdle |
Production company |
SenArt Films Next Wednesday |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $500,000 |
| Box office | $8,679,814[1] |
The Station Agent is a 2003 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Tom McCarthy. It stars Peter Dinklage as a man who seeks solitude in an abandoned train station in the Newfoundland section of West Milford, New Jersey. It also stars Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale. For his writing achievement, McCarthy won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
Plot
Finbar McBride, a quiet, withdrawn, unmarried man with dwarfism, has a deep love of railroads. He works in a Hoboken model train hobby shop owned by his elderly and similarly taciturn friend Henry Styles. Because he feels ostracized by a public that tends to view him as peculiar due to his size, Fin keeps to himself.
When Henry dies unexpectedly, Fin is told that the hobby shop is to be closed. However, he also learns that Henry's will left him a piece of rural property with an abandoned train depot on it. He moves in to 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 Cuban American, is operating his father's roadside snack truck while the elder man recovers from an illness, and Olivia Harris is an 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 photographs them. Joe and Fin sleep over at Olivia's house after watching this footage and the next morning a flustered, unannounced David is greeted by the two of them. The three forge a tentative friendship that is threatened when Olivia descends into a deep depression, disappearing from the town. Meanwhile, Emily seeks solace in Fin, who slowly is realizing interaction with other humans may not be as unpleasant as he thought. Fin tries to protect Emily from her boyfriend at a bar, but he pushes Fin aside, causing Fin to lapse back into his asocial behavior. Emily later comes to apologize and spends the night with Fin. Cleo asks Fin if Olivia is coming back, to which he replies that he doesn't know. He decides to keep an eye on Olivia's house, but when he spots her fighting on the phone with David and he goes up on the porch, Olivia angrily tells him to leave. Fin spends the night drinking and, collapsing on the track, is passed over by a train, undamaged but for his pocket watch. As if feeling blessed by his gift of life (and symbolically upon his watch getting destroyed in the train mishap), Fin walks up to Olivia's home only to find she has attempted suicide. Olivia reveals that David is having another baby with a different woman. Fin takes care of Olivia's home while she recuperates in the hospital. Fin picks up the courage to talk to school kids about trains.
Olivia, Joe, and Fin share a meal at Olivia's house, their conversation filled with some small talk and reconciliation.
Production
According to writer/director Tom 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 Township, Rockaway Borough, Hoboken, Newfoundland and Oak Ridge, New Jersey and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The abandoned train station is located in Newfoundland, New Jersey, on the active New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway.
Cast
- Peter Dinklage as Finbar McBride
- Bobby Cannavale as Joe Oramas
- Patricia Clarkson as Olivia Harris
- Raven Goodwin as Cleo
- Paul Benjamin as Henry Styles
- Michelle Williams as Emily
- Richard Kind as Louis Tiboni
- Josh Pais as Carl
- Joe Lo Truglio as Danny
- John Slattery as David
- Jayce Bartok as Chris
Reception
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 in three theaters, it grossed $57,785 on its opening weekend with an average of $19,261 per theater and ranking 55th at the box office. The film's widest release was 198 theaters and it ended up earning $5,739,376 domestically and $2,940,438 internationally for a total of $8,679,814, well above its estimated $500,000 production budget.[1]
The film received a very positive response from critics and has a rating of 95% on Rotten tomatoes based on 153 reviews with an average rating of 8 out of 10. The consensus states "A sweet and quirky film about a dwarf, a refreshment stand operator, and a reclusive artist connecting with one another."[2] The film also has a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 36 reviews.[3]
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."[4]
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." [5]
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."[6]
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." [7]
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." [8]
Awards and nominations
References
- 1 2 "The Station Agent (2003)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ "The Station Agent". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ "The Station Agent Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ Mitchell, Elvis (3 October 2003). "A Train Depot, More Dream Than Destination". New York Times. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ Ebert, Roger (17 October 2003). "The Station Agent Movie Review (2003)". rogerebert.com. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ Stein, Ruthie (17 October 2003). "Troubled souls find one another / 'Station Agent' has unusual story that quietly gets under the skin". San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco: Hearst). ISSN 1932-8672. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ Rolling Stone review Archived May 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ The Times review Archived June 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
External links
- Official website
- The Station Agent at the Internet Movie Database
- The Station Agent at Rotten Tomatoes
- Location of Fin's train station (Google Street View) (Open Street Map)
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