I know it was out last year and all, but it was one of those movies I never got around to seeing. Even though on more than one occasion, last year, my phone would ring, and it would be this or that friend saying, “Have you seen The Station Agent<\/i> yet?? Oh you HAVE to see it. You, of all people, HAVE to see it!”<\/p>\n
Now I can see why.<\/p>\n
Patricia Clarkson has always been a favorite of mine. She’s always good. (My first impression of her was from High Art<\/a><\/i>, where she played a leather-pants-clad German ex-actress heroin addict … who speaks in a low drawly disaffected German accent, and continuosly blathers on and on about Wim Wenders – It’s like she’s a drugged-up Marlene Dietrich wannabe. It’s hard to describe her performance. But I really thought she WAS that person. I was convinced she was German, and I was also convinced that she MUST be a performance artist or something.) No. It was just acting.<\/p>\n Just? I truly thought they had seen this German performance artist in a smoky dingy club and asked her to be in the movie. She was that convincing.<\/p>\n When I saw her in something else, I could not believe my eyes. “That’s that same woman from High Art<\/i> … Holy crap. How can that be the same person??”<\/p>\n She’s hilarious in 6 Feet Under<\/i> as the hippie-dippie aunt who lives in the canyon in the crazy house, who surrounds herself with artists, because she ISN’T one, and who is wonderful, in a really really inappropriate way. heh. I love her in that.<\/p>\n The other two leads (Peter Dinklage and Paul Benjamin) are equally as marvelous. There is no “lead” – it’s the three of them. And the three of them create a friendship, a three-sided relationship – which makes a bizarre kind of sense, an ultimate kind of sense, only you never ever would predict it.<\/p>\n Peter Dinklage plays Finbar, a dwarf who randomly inherits a small train station out in the wilds of New Jersey. He moves there. He lives a life of isolation. He has no friends, he speaks in a monotone, and he is also a train enthusiast. Only he never gets enthusiastic, really. He has a stopwatch in his pocket, and he is in a train-enthusiast club, and he knows all there is to know about trains. He moves out to nowheres-ville New Jersey. You can feel that there is a deep loneliness in him, a deep and despairing quiet … he is resigned. All of this is made even more poignant because of his size. The movie gets you into the world of dwarves, what it must BE like to be them.<\/p>\n (You will remember Peter Dinklage from the VERY funny acerbic film Living in Oblivion<\/i> – a look at the insanity of shooting a low-budget indie film with pretensions. A dwarf is hired for a “dream sequence”. Dinklage is dressed up in a small ruffly tuxedo and he has to circle around the main female character, holding up a huge red apple enticingly. This is the scene. But Dinklage plays a kind of pissed-off diva-ish dwarf, who is SICK TO DEATH of the stupid characters he always has to play. He SIMMERS with rage, as they go through a couple of takes. He is SO PISSED that he has been hired to be in a dream sequence. Finally, he has had it, and he throws a huge hissy fit. Has anyone seen this movie? It’s so freakin’ funny. He throws his top hat down and explodes: “Oh, that’s right, that’s right, this is a DREAM SEQUENCE and of COURSE for a dream sequence YOU NEED A DWARF, right??? Because we’re just so WEEEEEEIRD, right, we’re just so ODD, that THE ONLY PLACE YOU CAN PUT US IS IN A DREAM SEQUENCE!” He storms off the set, shouting, “I have fucking HAD it. I have fucking HAD IT.” heh heh.)<\/p>\n Well, in Station Agent, this same actor plays a quiet guy, with sad eyes, who seems to live his life in a way that makes him most invisible.<\/p>\n Paul Benjamin plays this gregarious friendly hotdog-stand owner. All I can say about this character (and this actor, I suppose) is that you fall in love with him immediately. He is one of those people who … brings out the best in others. He’s a big-talkin’ jocky Jersey guy, maybe not the brightest bulb, but has a heart of gold. And he kind of REFUSES to let Finbar be invisible. He INSISTS on being friends.<\/p>\n Into this mix comes this wacky frenetic local woman (Patricia Clarkson), going through a terrible divorce, having an awful time.<\/p>\n These three characters become friends. It’s not a steady smooth road, either … Finbar (the dwarf) really does just want to be left alone. Joe (the hot-dog guy) cannot take a hint and refuses to let him alone. But somehow … a friendship evolves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know it was out last year and all, but it was one of those movies I never got around to seeing. Even though on more than one occasion, last year, my phone would ring, and it would be this … Continue reading