Train of Life

 (1998)

Train of Life Blu-ray offers solid video and great audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
Central Europe, WWII. The village fool of a small Jewish community warns the townsfolk that the Nazis are coming, and advises them to build a fake deportation train to cross the Russian border and get to Palestine. Some Jews are dressed up with German uniforms, and soon they start getting strange ideas about how it feels to be a Nazi; others are infected with the fast-spreading germ of communism. Meanwhile, the Russian border gets closer and closer...

For more about Train of Life and the Train of Life Blu-ray release, see the Train of Life Blu-ray Review

Starring: Rufus, Lionel Abelanski, Clément Harari
Director: Radu Mihaileanu

» See full cast & crew

Train of Life Blu-ray Review

Fiddler on the boxcar.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 30, 2012

Life Is Beautiful proved that a comedy—or at the very least a drama with comedic elements—could be fashioned out of perhaps the most unlikely source material, The Holocaust. The sheer scope of this immense tragedy is so mind boggling that even dramatic attempts to deal with it often seem hopelessly inadequate, so anyone trying to inject a little humor into a depiction of what is still one of the all time (if not the all time) greatest crimes against humanity would seem to be spectacularly wrongheaded. But Train of Life does attempt this feat in much the same way that Life is Beautiful did, namely by combining some almost buffoonish elements with an underlying sense of melancholy and bittersweet sentimentality. There are some well known folktales in Jewish tradition known as the Chelm Stories, about a shtetl named Chelm filled to the brim with foolish types who are always doing dunderheaded things, and a lot of Train of Life plays exactly like a Chelm tale brought vividly to life. The Holocaust is of course no laughing matter, but we're getting to a point in history where so few people who experienced it first hand are around anymore that we're perhaps inevitably losing a visceral connection to it. This strikes some of us with Jewish ancestry as at least a little odd, since so many of us were raised with stories of the horror and many of us have actual family members who either were interred in camps or actualy perished in the tragedy, and for people like that, Train of Life may in fact seem a bit too whimsical for its putative subject matter, despite the fact that the film attempts to get the viewer—Jewish or not—in touch with the horror via a rather unexpected path.



Train of Life was very well received on the festival circuit during its theatrical roll out, winning the Audience Award at Sundance and Sao Paulo as well as several other prizes along the way. Somehow it got swallowed up after its release and largely disappeared, which prevented the film from gaining momentum and achieving anything approaching the worldwide impact that the Roberto Benigni opus did. The two films share a certain similarity of spirit, though Train of Life tends to deal with the Holocaust a bit more discursively than Life is Beautiful's more direct approach.

Mitt Romney raised some eyebrows across the political spectrum during the Republican primary season when he suggested in a debate that he believed that "self deportation" could take care of any incipient illegal immigrant problem the United States was experiencing. As odd as the phrase "self deportation" may sound to some, that's exactly what turns out to be the central plot conceit of Train of Life. When village fool (it would be mean to call him an outright idiot) Shlomo (Lionel Abalanski) sees Nazis approaching his idyllic shtletl (yes, this shtetl is indeed idyllic, full of dancing and singing villagers akin to the opening "Tradition" number in Fiddler on the Roof), he enlists the aid of the town's Rabbi (Clément Harari) to warn everyone. The town elders are up in arms about how to handle the imminent threat until Shlomo off handedly suggests that they pool their resources to buy a train, dress some of the villagers as German soldiers, and pretend to be a "shipment" bound for one of the camps, while secretly attempting to get to a safe haven.

What might initially be presumed to be a "can they do it?" film turns into something quite different, or at least a different kind of "can they do it?" Getting the train and costuming some of the villagers as Nazis (the ones who speak the best German, naturally) turns out to be the easy part, taking up relatively little screen time. But once the train gets underway, Train of Life starts to explore a number of interesting sidebars that gives the film its peculiar flavor. The film ably depicts the well known sociological and psychological trope that those given apparent power—whether real or not—begin abusing it. Therefore, Mordechai (Rufus), the villager appointed to play the head Nazi on the train, begins assuming more and more dictatorial control. Meanwhile Mordechai's son Sami (Mihai Calin) is in love with town beauty Esther (Agatha de la Fontaine), with Esther unaware that none other than Shlomo has eyes for her. A rabble rousing young village man named Yossi (Michael Muller) has come to the conclusion that the only way to get the train's occupants to safety is for all of them to adopt Communism. And so we have a microcosm of both social and political elements that were roiling Europe during World War II.

What's perhaps most unexpected about Train of Life is how well some of the dramatic elements work—some of which are quite tension filled, especially when the train occupants are interacting with real Nazis—while some of the comedic elements never quite find their mark. This is a film that wants to be whimsical but probably due to its inherently tragic subject matter can never quite achieve the playful ambience that true whimsy requires. The screenplay also suffers from not being especially subtle, most notably with regard to the competing ideological elements which spring up on the train, which often play more like screeds than anything springing out of actual character development.

The film takes an arresting (no pun intended) 180 degree turn in its closing moments, a surprising, even shocking, denouement that won't be spoiled in this review other than to state it colors everything that has gone before in a totally new light. The fable aspect of the story becomes more understandable at that point, though some of the political ruminations the film has gone into aren't especially well elucidated by the final revelation. Train of Life remains a fascinating little film in any regard. It's not completely successful, but it manages to ultimately make at least one devastating observation about the lengths the human spirit will go to escape, whether figuratively or literally.

Train of Life Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Train of Life is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The elements here are in mostly excellent shape, and in fact only a few minor blemishes dot the landscape from time to time, with the bulk of those being very small white flecks and specks. Colors are quite robust and accurate looking. Contrast is generally fine, and for the most part even the dim interior scenes (which are quite frequent within the train) have good clarity and sufficient shadow detail. The entire film is on the soft side, which one assumes mimics its original theatrical exhibition, with midrange and wide shots verging on the fuzzy at times. The film glistens with a kind of gauzy light a lot of the time, as if it's being filtered through some wistful lens of memory. The exterior location shots offer some very good depth of field.

Train of Life Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Train of Life features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that may not offer much in the way of extremely wide separation but which does present the charming klezmer inflected score of Goran Bregovic with appealing fidelity and some really sharp and precise midrange and low range especially. There are some minor synch issues with the dialogue from time to time which I am assuming come from the film having had some less than well handled ADR done (note the first meeting of the town elders after Shlomo has seen the Nazis for a good example). Otherwise, though, dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly and the film's ambient environmental effects are also well woven into the mix.

Train of Life Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc.

Train of Life Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

Train of Life doesn't quite gel in the same way that Life is Beautiful was able to, but it's still an extremely touching and often gently instructive film on the foibles of human nature when people are confronted with an unimaginable calamity. Writer and director Radu Mihailenu knows what he wants to achieve with the film, and if the execution isn't always completely successful, there's still a spirit of compassion and deep feeling that helps to make this film a remarkable, if flawed, recreation of what amounts to a fable. The film tends to work more effectively in its dramatic elements than in its comedic, something that becomes completely apparent in the rather shocking revelation that caps the film in its closing moments. This Blu-ray offers very good video and audio and those who were moved by Life is Beautiful may well want to check out Train of Life as well. Recommended.

Independent distributors Olive Films have added two more titles to their October slate: Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu's Train de vie a.k.a Train of Life (1998) and Peruvian director Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow (2009). Both films will be available for ...