The Station Agent - Movie Reviews

Feb 14, 2023 Peter Dinklage: "I'm ridiculed for my height and perpetually alone." Patricia Clarkson: "I'm suicidal and reeling from my son's death." Bobby Cannavale: "I sell coffee." A very nice film about friendship and isolation, one with a sufficiently powerful lead performance from Dinklage that it essentially established him as an actor. The commentaries

Feb 14, 2023

Peter Dinklage: "I'm ridiculed for my height and perpetually alone." Patricia Clarkson: "I'm suicidal and reeling from my son's death." Bobby Cannavale: "I sell coffee." A very nice film about friendship and isolation, one with a sufficiently powerful lead performance from Dinklage that it essentially established him as an actor. The commentaries on the social isolation that Dinklage's Fin suffers (and the emotional walls he builds up around himself) are handled with delicacy, and Dinklage has just the right degree of exasperated resignation to go along with it, but the overall story builds much further beyond that. An unlikely trio of friends brought together through unusual circumstances, working through their past experiences along the way - Fin moving into a depot in rural New Jersey after his friend passes away, Cannavale's Joe operating a food truck right outside and trying to get to know Fin with a bubbly personality and persistence, and Clarkson's Olivia almost running over Fin (twice) before discovering that the two of them have more in common than she might have expected. The film mercifully isn't about big emotional breakthroughs, but about incrementally relating to one each other more and more until they each look around and find themselves oddly invested in each other's lives. There might be a few suburban sadness tropes on display, and Dinklage was too early in his career to avoid being cast in a role that relied heavily on his dwarfism to build out his character, but the combination of the sincerity of the performances, the sincerity of the friendships, and a careful sprinkling of comedy (that doesn't slide into the indie film curse of quirkiness to compensate for other weaknesses) combine to make a film that can work as more than a footnote in the career of one successful actor. Still not sure if Fin ever got electric, water, or any other utility set up in his train depot/house. (3.5/5)

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