Movie review: The Station Agent

In The Station Agent, Finbar McBride, a dwarf, inherits a rural New Jersey train depot when his only friend dies. He goes to live there and despite wanting to be left alone he has repeated encounters with a few interesting local people. I don't know why I missed hearing about this film when it was released in 2003 (there was even some Oscar buzz), but my newest imaginary boyfriend has been waiting for me all this time. Actually, the whole cast is wonderful. Everyone is funny and fascinating in a quietly hilarious way.

"Dwarf" was the term used in the film, with "midget" once quietly denied. "Little person" never came up, so I'll take my language cues from that unless I hear otherwise. Not that dwarfness (dwarfism?) was exactly the point of the story.

Fin's appearance as a dwarf is quietly present all through the film -- especially whenever he goes out in public -- but it is never presented as an impairment or the source of any crude jokes (visual or otherwise) where he's too short to do something. He's a capable, independent man others seem to be drawn to. His dwarfism is a disability only in how other people see him, and possibly in how a lifetime of this has shaped his character.

In the UK, "disability" is the term those familiar with disability politics use to distinguish societal actions of prejudice and discrimination from the physical or mental conditions -- "impairments" -- that may or may not be actually present. While the ADA attempted to incorporate this idea into American civil rights by, for example, including discrimination against people believed to have AIDS as well as people who actually do, this distinction is not well-recognized anywhere. But Fin is a great presentation of how society disables an individual even when impairments are not apparent by setting them apart with stares and the behavior of strangers.

Peter Dinklage, who plays Fin, has talked about the effect this treatment can have:

Unfortunately, a lot of kids' curiosity is squelched by their parents. Adults don't want to embarrass somebody else, but that perpetuates itself, and it can lead to shutting out anyone who's different than you. Obviously we all do have these societal behaviors that we have to abide by. But, I talk to some people who just don't want to meet my eyes. They think looking at me is rude, because they were brought up not to point or stare or whatever.

Fin's stoic loneliness matches that of the other characters and presents an interesting collage of the many ways people become socially alienated from the world. Disability as a kind of social alienation is only one example. The way Fin and the other misfits he meets form a bond is despite their separateness is the quiet beauty of the film.

Seriously, this movie makes my top ten favorites, and not just because it's probably the first ever well-developed dwarf character on film.