5/10
The Immigrant is a movie that hits the ground walking, and breezes by without ever really registering anything in the viewer. Its story is steeped in melodrama, not helped at all by the cinematography (the entire film is shot in a kind of gold/brown hue that I guess is supposed to evoke the 1920's by force) or its syrupy, string-heavy soundtrack that runs almost continuously throughout the film. Writer/director James Gray allegedly based most of the movie on the stories his grandparents (or great-grandparents?) told him of their arrival in New York, but it still feels heavily constructed and artificial.
The movie's biggest downfall to me is the main character Ewa, portrayed by Marion Cotillard. For most of the film she's barely more than a blank slate, and we are rarely given insight into what she really thinks or feels. I guess this was intentional and in concert with the movie's anonymous, non-descript title ("the immigrant") but I don't think it did the story many favors.
Despite boasting two heavyweight actors (Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix), I couldn't really say the acting was a strength either. Both do their best to breathe some life into characters that don't have a lot of depth, but it just feels like they're overcompensating for the fact that there's not much to work with.
I also feel bad for Cotillard in a way, whose agent seems to be swinging wildly in an attempt to find a post-La Vie en Rose vehicle for her but is coming up with a lot of should-have-been-better duds (Public Enemies, Nine, Rust & Bone, The Immigrant).
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