THE STATION AGENT
When four feet five inches tall Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) takes up residence in Newfoundland, New Jersey, it quickly becomes apparent that the townspeople haven’t seen many dwarfs. On his first day, Fin walks to the local convenience store, and just as he’s reaching for a carton of butter, the old lady owner snaps his picture, with a camera she appears to have ever at the ready, like a mini-market Diane Arbus. Fin pauses in surprise, and then continues shopping, seemingly nonplussed, a man long resolved to the inherent weirdness of the tall.
Fin’s mentor at a Hoboken model train shop died a few weeks ago, and much to Fin’s surprise, left his assistant a tiny plot of land in Newfoundland, upon which sits the town’s now obsolete train depot. Neither Fin nor the actor playing him gives much away, not at first anyway, but Fin is probably thrilled. He’s a trainman. Late at night, he lies on his bed (an old couch) and listens to the them roaring past his new home, heading for elsewhere. Their weight and clatter makes the sofa bed tremble, and although writer-director Tom McCarthy doesn’t linger, it seems likely that Fin doesn’t shut his eyes until after those cars have rattled past, until he’s sure the trains are still running on time.
For Fin, there’s important restoration work to be done—a lifetime’s worth — and yet people — and who needs them? — keep knocking at the station door. First, and most persistently, like a gnat you can’t swat away, comes Joe (Bobby Cannavale), an adorable, can’t-sit-still, won’t-shut-up Cuban who parks his ailing father’s hot dog truck outside the depot everyday and who desperately wants a pal. Joe’s benignly hot for the haunting Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), who is so klutzy and distracted that she nearly runs Fin down, twice in the same hour. Initially, Fin isn’t any more forthcoming with her than he is Joe, but Olivia’s persistent too, and one night, over a bottle of apology wine (for almost running him over), she tells Fin that her little boy died two years ago. At the news, Fin stares, stunned (Olivia: “Could you not look at me right now?”), for here is someone with more of a right to sadness than he, and that, I think, is the moment Fin reengages with the world. Suddenly, he’s needed.
Despite a flurry of melodrama in the third act, not much happens in this movie, except that three people form a bond, for a lifetime, or maybe for just right now. Either way is fine. Joe, always talking, keeps trailing along behind Fin, pretending to love trains too, until, suddenly, he does. Olivia, whose husband has left her, keeps giving them rides home, and soon, they’re a trio, walking the tracks. And one day, to fulfill a dream of Fin’s, he and Joe take Olivia’s video camera and that lopsided tin can hot dog truck and go racing alongside a speeding train, like storm hunters pursuing a tornado. Fin, riding shotgun, proves to be a lousy cameraman and accidentally turns the camera on himself, forever capturing a glimpse of his own face — eyes wide, soul thrilled. Joe’s beside him, driving wildly, and whooping and hollerin’ like a cowboy roping his first steer. The pursuit is a rush, but mostly, Joe’s happy because he’s made Fin happy. They’re friends. It’s a quick flash of a scene, and yet, watching those two — so ecstatically engaged with life — I thought, Oh. This is what I’ve forgotten, and what Joe knows instinctively: Joy doesn’t just come. Sometimes you have to chase after it. You have to meet it halfway.
Chuck Wilson