Bonding through Loneliness
by Kari Bowles
I can remember a period of time when, if asked to name a major actor who was a dwarf, really the only answer would be Warwick Davis (“Oh! From Willow and those Leprechaun movies!”). Mr. Davis is still active as a performer and has an admirable body of work, but there is now another prominent actor of short stature who arguably has even more name recognition. Thanks to his Emmy and Golden Globe-winning performance as the sardonic yet good-hearted Tyrion Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones, Peter Dinklage has achieved a reputation and fan base that any performer would be glad to have, whatever their height. But Mr. Dinklage had been appearing on screen for sometime before signing on to be the Imp of Westeros. For viewers interested in seeing him play a very different but equally compelling character, The Station Agent (2003) is a good film to investigate. It’s the sort of movie you might be tempted to pass up because it doesn’t seem flashy enough, but doing so would be a huge loss. An attentive viewer will become engaged not so much by plotline or by “action”—in the inept sense that word tends to have in the movie-going world—but by the people they see incarnated onscreen by skillful actors and the truths and warm connections they somehow bring forth. Peter Dinklage stars as Finbar McBride, a reserved young man with a passionate interest in trains. When his best friend and boss dies, Finbar relocates to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey. Tired of being treated as a freakish curiosity, he seeks to live as solitary an existence as he can; this plan is complicated by Joe Oramas (Bobby Cannavale), an exuberantly gregarious hot dog vendor who sets up shop outside the station, and by Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson), a soon-to-be divorced artist with other emotional burdens to manage. They are both interested in getting to know Finbar, but he is reluctant to form any attachments. There is also a young girl named Cleo (Raven Goodwin); she loves trains too and initially thinks that Finbar is a child like herself. The station agent may just need human interaction after all. The Station Agent screened and was well received at the Sundance Film Festival. However, it manages to avoid the self-conscious quirkiness and strained anti-climactic elements that the festival has sometimes unfortunately fostered. These are characters with very specific interests and limitations, yes, but these interests and limitations are never there just for the sake of novelty or because the audience should just find them interesting. Writer and director Tom McCarthy (a recent Oscar nominee for directing Spotlight) is shrewd enough to know that in a story about loneliness and the developing of friendships, it is the journey that matters. Finbar slowly begins to emerge from his shell by recognizing bits of his own struggle in others. No matter how different we may feel, we may have surprising things in common. •