The Station Agent (2003)

"The Station Agent" is a brief, sweet film about a handful of lonely Americans finding themselves and then each other, thanks to friendship, a few beers and the hobby of train watching.

As the film opens, Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) works at a toy train collector's shop in a rural speck of an Americana town. The store owner (Paul Benjamin) seems to be Finbar's only friend, until the old man drops dead on the store's old wood floor. From the late owner's lawyer, Finbar learns the store is to be closed and that the old man has willed him a train station in rural New Jersey. With nothing else to his meager life, Finbar takes the train station and is content with it. Similar to the town he previously lived in, the depot is remote and offers little if any human contact. If only. A free-talking Italian (Bobby Cannavale) runs a food/coffee truck only yards from the depot, a blond woman (Patricia Clarkson) with a penchant for reckless driving keeps dropping by, and a local teen girl (Raven Goodwin) and a 20-something librarian (Michelle Williams) also constantly cross paths with Finbar. Bonding and comedy ensues.

The film is sometimes too obvious (see, Finbar really is watching his life go by whilst watching those trains go by), but the actors and the simple, honest dialogue make the film work. It's a sweet character study, all the more enjoyable because Dinklage is a dwarf, but except for a few plainers (that's Jersey for redneck) and other minor scenes, that fact never is used to define Finbar as a man. He's short, and it's no more "special" than Cannavale being tall.

Dinklage, by the way, is brilliant -- again. Check him out in the wonderful "Death at a Funeral" as a gay man. One more plus here: The film ends with loose ends untied, and problems unsolved. We know these characters have lives after the credits roll. Sweet. B+