The Station Agent: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

(Originally published 2003)

Thomas McCarthy’s “The Station Agent” is the story of Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage), an intellectual dwarf who became an unwanted celebrity, of sorts, due to his size.

At 4-foot-5, he can’t go anywhere without drawing a crowd, generating a cruel remark from a stranger, being looked upon with sympathy, or—worse for Finbar--being mistaken for a child by a child.

As such, Fin’s life has been shaped by a world eager to ridicule him. He’s a man of the fewest words, reluctant to make personal connections because of the disappointment that have often accompanied them.

If this sounds depressing, it isn’t. The great achievement of “The Station Agent” is that it isn’t nearly as maudlin or as bitter as it could have been in the wrong hands.

Fortunately, it also isn’t as opportunistic.

While it’s true that the film’s initial quirks are driven by Finbar’s awkward interactions with people, some of whom actually yelp when they see him, the movie, from McCarthy’s own script, gradually becomes something you don’t expect--a story about the necessity of friendship and the risks it can take for some to plunge into it.

The title is derived from Finbar’s interest in trains. He loves them, studies them, and even--by the sheer happenstance of an unexpected inheritance--finds himself living near them in an old train station in Newfoundland, N.J.

It’s there that he meets Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a jovial, lonely lug who for weeks has been tending to his father’s lunch truck while the man recuperates from illness. It’s also there that he is nearly run down twice by Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a distracted local artist whose marriage fell apart after the accidental death of her son.

If it weren’t for the rambunctious, extroverted Joe, who has the sort of rare, affable personality that’s hard to resist, “The Station Agent” might have been a silent film, such is the depth of Fin and Olivia’s need for solitude and quiet.

For the first half of the movie they don’t get much of either, with Joe endlessly trying to fill the space between them with words. Still, as the movie unfolds and these three fall into an unexpected friendship, it’s the silences that come to define them and the movie, with McCarthy understanding that the best relationships are those in which the pressure of talking for the sake of talking doesn’t exist.

Add to this Fin’s fleeting flirtation with the town’s pregnant librarian, Emily (Michelle William), and his funny interactions with the chubby young Cleo (Raven Goodwin), and you have a fine first effort that’s well worth seeing.

Grade: A-