This brilliant Indie won several prizes at Sundance and is now showing in arthouse cinemas around the country. It's a spirited meditation on loneliness, belonging, and friendship, that revolves around the accidental exile of Fin (played with luminous understatement by Peter Dinklage) to a train depot in white trash New Jersey ("Newfoundland") where he meets/is befriend by a) a tranquilizer-addicted woman whose son died in a playground accident, b) a good-hearted Latino from Manhatten named Joe, c) a pregnant librarian who is just legal and fighting with the redneck rube who impregnated her, and d) a chubby elementary school girl who plays house in an abandoned train.

They are brought together in some sense by Fin's trials as a dwarf (he is a handsome thirty-something who stands just under four-and-a-half feet tall), but by much more than that. A theme throughout the film is the pursuit of trains, a topic that the director toys with before giving himself into it. I'm not interested in plot spoilers, but I will say that trains are a vibrant, interactive background on which the story takes place.

I particularly appreciated the study of how friendships evolve with deviants. How long can a new friend wait to learn about a scar, a missing limb, a physical disability, socially deviant behavior? Joe is almost Christ-like in his lack of concern for Fin's dwarfism, a fact that the director plays with and highlights in two drawn-out= conversations of near misapprehension. Late in the film, though, even loving Joe has to notice that fact when he wonders whether Fin has lost his virginity, and if so, was it to a woman with dwarfism. We feel, with Fin, the betrayal of the unconditional affection of their friendship and recognize our shared culpability in focusing on his dwarfism ourselves. In a metafictive pang, I realize as I write this that I was so impressed with Dinklage's acting that I want to see him in other films, but I don't know how he would be incorporated without the film being about his dwarfism.

A wonderful film that I would recommend to anyone college-age and above. I think (but can't remember) that there may be some language that would seem vulgar on Temple Square. There are no special effects or gore, and though there are intimate moments, there is no sex. I'd give it an A-.

Sam Brown