The Station Agent
The cool people in ''The Station Agent'' are the ones who can look at Fin (Peter Dinklage) and remain unfazed by the fact that he's 4-foot-6. It's not that hard to do. More than one person in Tom McCarthy's affectionate comedy finds him freaky for other reasons. For starters, he's a train geek who moves into an abandoned depot he's inherited from a deceased friend and co-worker. And on a first meeting, Fin is impenetrably taciturn. His average sentence lasts about a second: ''Yes,'' ''No thanks,'' ''Stay.''
Yet after 20 minutes of this, while finding Fin inscrutable, you might be swooning. ''The Station Agent'' makes a case for Dinklage as a romantic leading man, not the carnival sideshow some of the more boneheaded people in the film's quiet New Jersey town want him to be. The movie is not about a dwarf; it's about a loner who's never felt entirely comfortable around people. Gary Cooper used to wander into makeshift Western towns with a similarly stern countenance and the same vocabulary.
Of course, nobody in ''The Station Agent'' makes an encouraging first impression on Fin. Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), for instance, runs him off the road twice; a librarian named Emily (Michelle Williams) shrieks at him; and Joe (Bobby Cannavale) just wants to talk his ear off. But understatements permeate McCarthy's frequently wonderful script. If it takes Fin a minute to warm up to these three, it's not because they're offensive, it's because, from where he stands, they're weird. Olivia, Joe, and Emily have lives as big and problematic as his. They're just as lonely, too.
Olivia, who lost her young son, remains estranged from her husband and her old life in Princeton. Emily is carrying the baby of her ignoramus boyfriend, unbeknownst to him. And right outside Fin's new home, Joe, an amiable Cubano, runs a snack truck.
This says nothing of Cleo (Raven Goodwin), the tubby black girl wandering around the abandoned railroad tracks in search of a playmate, settling on Fin. Cleo is a particularly nice creation, thanks in part to Goodwin's quirky charm. She's the only soul you can imagine being given as hard a time for the way she looks as Fin.
Mercifully, ''The Station Agent'' is not about how these misfits heal one another -- they're not that miserable, for one thing. It's about the unlikely ways proximity, need, and coincidence create friendships. I can't recall the last time scenes of people just hanging out passed for such pleasant moviegoing, but this film makes cozy, natural business of it: Cleo inviting Olivia to climb aboard her empty railcar, Fin having a cigarette as he stares out at the Hoboken skyline, and all the numerous, delightful bits of him, Joe, and Olivia sitting around trying to overcome the awkwardness of their budding bond; by the last, happy scene, they've conquered it.
Where Fin and Olivia in some way require being alone, Joe can't stand being alone with himself. He's stuck in his dad's Beckett play of a truck and hates it. Cannavale's macho-sensitive buoyancy saves the movie from its more pitiable self. In the middle of the movie, Joe begs Fin to sit and read at the plastic table and chairs outside his snack truck. What results is a cute micro-disaster: ''You said you weren't going to talk to me, Joe.'' ''It's been, like, 20 minutes.'' ''Nine.'' ''You timed me?'' ''Yup.'' ''That's cold, bro.''
But as if the film's relative lightness were almost too much to bear, McCarthy does make the regrettable choice to veer into mild drama, such as when Fin goes to the local watering hole, gets hammered, climbs atop the bar, and urges the patrons to ''take a good look.'' A self-pitying moment for Fin turns into a sad moment for McCarthy, too. Loud, emotional proclamations are not the film's forte. (It's worth noting that Cannavale is not in on these scenes.)
Otherwise, the acting in ''The Station Agent'' is a mostly quiet affair. Dinklage's face and demeanor, his sense of solitude, ballasts some of the film's loonier episodes. There's always something on his mind, and you're always wondering what it is.
Video
