I found “The Immigrant” to be a rather boring movie. There was not enough action and the movie felt stretched out. Though the movie depicted the life in that time (the 1910s) pretty well, I feel like the nearly 2 hours run time was what killed the movie for me, it was plainly just not interesting to me. But do the critics agree?
I was surprised to find a lot of positive reviews for this movie, as I didn’t like it at all. One review that I found goes as follows: “A slow, simmering film with intense characters and a drama that demands patience and rewards with a rich drama about the American experience”. One thing is for sure, the movie was slow and simmering, but this is the only part of the review that I agree with. I did not find this movie to reward my patience after a 2 hour watch, nor did I find the characters to be “intense”. While the acting in the movie wasn’t bad, it was not particulary good either.
Even though there are a lot of good reviews about the “Immigrant”, there are also some bad reviews, that I agree with. For example: “There are love rivals vying for the same women. However is this enough to save the film? Not really as it’s hard to connect with the two dimensional Ewa”, and: “Technically there is nothing wrong with The Immigrant, but it never engages or even really touches the audience”. I found these reviews to have the same main criticism about the movie as I have. Ewa was definitely a dull character and I feel like the movie never really engaged the audience. You might think the slow pace of the movie might pay off in the end, however I did not find this to be the case.
To summarize, a positive side of the movie is that it gave a generally good overview of the life in that time, however the movie itself was quite boring and the relatively long run time did not help this. The main character was, also, dull and hard to feel sorry for. I think this movie could have been so much more and I find i t to be a shame that it wasn’t.