Train of Life (1998)

Simply A Masterpiece

As Good As It Gets

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

There is a very fine line that you walk when you are trying to make a comedy about a subject as difficult as the holocaust. Roberto Benigni walked that line with "Life is Beautiful" and never stepped wrong. He knew how to have the trickiest balance between humor and the darkest horror man has ever known.One can imagine how Benigni could have gone wrong. But for an example there is "Train of Life", a shameful exercise in filmmaking whose premise is intriguing, whose script is embarrassing and whose ending is a kick in the face.Here is the intriguing premise: In 1941 the people of a small Jewish community become aware that Hitler is killing Jews in Europe. Fearing that they could be deported, they decide to fake their own deportation by stealing a train, making Nazi uniforms and heading for Pakistan, thereby deceiving the Nazi and saving their lives.The embarrassing script gives us a cast of cartoonish characters who spend 90% of the film squabbling. There is no tension in the scenes where the train in stopped by the Nazis because the Nazis in this film are so dimwitted that they would fall for anything! Now for the ending: The ending (which I won't give away) I suppose is supposed to be poignant or funny or touching but found it to be shameful. With so many denying that the holocaust ever happened, we don't need a film this trite. The movie takes this subject and grinds it down to a rather unfunny sitcom.

It is difficult to review this movie without giving anything away – and giving away about this movie would be a crime. If you, dear reader, have an interest in "Train of Life" and haven't watched it yet, I can only recommend that you stop reading now (and start watching).Shlomo, the village idiot of some small Jewish hamlet in Eastern-Europe has a vision of Germans appearing and deporting all the villagers. Under Shlomos guidance, the villager's decide to buy a ram shackled train, dress up as Nazis and rather deport themselves (needless to say, not to any concentration camp but rather to Palestine). On their way, they have to avoid many obstacles – like German soldiers, resistance fighters who want to blow up the train, the dressed up "guards" suffering from a form of Stamford-Prison-Experiment-syndrome, a communist revolt among the passengers and the question whether it's kosher to celebrate the Sabbath wearing German uniforms. Last but not least, a group of gypsies (whose village-idiot had a vision of Germans deporting the gypsies, who would rather deport themselves to Egypt by dressing up as Germans and stealing a train). And yes, there is a happy – of sorts.Have to admit that I hesitated to watch "Train de Vie" for a while. Why? Well, I'm German and there are many moments in the life of a German where he/she is simply sick and tired of hearing, seeing or watching anything about Nazi-Germany, the holocaust, etc. Yes, the war has been over for some times, yes, the Fuehrer is dead (thank god) and yes, those bastards won't come back, at least not in our lifetime and not if my generation can help it.A good friend convinced me to watch it, claiming that "Train de Vie" is by no means your average War-movie; in fact, it wasn't like any other movie I had watched before. So I heeded the advice, watched and, what can I say, it has been on my personal top-10-list of favorite movies ever since. To point out one highlight would be unfair; the film is full of highlights. However, my personal favorite line comes, when the "deportees" try to master the German language, being explained that German only copies Yiddish, albeit without the Yiddish humor (and whether the Germans are aware that their language is imitating Yiddish). This reminded me when I overheard a young skinhead chatting with his mate, complaining that there was "something not kosher about his shiksa (girlfriend)", who apparently went a little "meschuggah" at the time."Train de Vie" has often been compared to either "Life is Beautiful" or "Black Cat, White Cat". No problem with that since Begnini's film is one of the few who has dared to make a movie about the holocaust in a comedic context and Kustaricis gypsy-farce has a similar life-affirming yet almost chaotic spirit – but that is where the similarities end. Few films are capable of combining doom and gloom so well with a life-affirming spirit. The humor of "Train de Vie" is as warm as it is witty, and it is as witty as it is black. As if director Radu Mihaileanu had combined the French farces of the 1970's with the typical Jewish humor (if there is such a thing) a la Ephraim Kishon.Last but not least, let me point out the excellent soundtrack by Goran Bregovic (who also composed the score for "Black Cat, White Cat". I love the soundtrack of "Black Cat, White Cat" but here Bregovic has outdone himself. Not an easy feat.Remember: in the end, the entire story is true – as it happened through the eyes of the village idiot.One of the rare cases when I give a film 10 from 10.

This film is good, but I really prefer "La vida es bella" by Benigni. I think that "El tren de la vida" is a movie that became the jews in idiots and ingenues people. I know that is not easy to make a comedy in the frame of Holocaust, but making films like this, I never hope that improve.

I now admire Roberto Benigni all the more. I don't know exactly what happened, but I suspect it was something like this: Benigni saw the "Train of Life" script, thought to himself, "great idea, lousy script - I can do better" ... then he went away and DID better, making a completely different film based on an completely different idea that must have looked, on paper, far less promising. The films are so different that further comparison is silly, except to say this much: as I watched "Train of Life" I thought to myself, "I sure hope this was written and directed by Jews, because otherwise it's in extremely poor taste"; as I watched "Life is Beautiful", no such thought occurred to me. It didn't matter. A film as good as Benigni's justifies itself.Maybe there's a kind of Yiddish humour here I'm not getting, or getting and not particularly liking. The latter is more likely, since I can see how this would work if it were a printed or spoken story. As a film, the nicest thing I can say is that done properly it probably could have amounted to something valuable. Two things prevent it from doing so. One: we're never as impressed as we should be by the villagers' ingenuity. Take the "communists", who are impossible to take seriously, yet who seriously endanger themselves and everyone else with their random squabbling. Are we really meant to sympathise with people so stupid? I wanted them to survive, but I'd have had an easier time doing so if they'd had some sense of self-preservation themselves. And two: I'm surprised that something with so many close-up shots with a wide-angle lens and such monotonous editing was released in cinemas at all. It was as if Mahaileanu was determined that no detail would be lost when the film played on television. Alas, I think he succeeded.(It was also a mistake to substitute French for Yiddish - yes, I'm aware that films produced in the English-speaking world are guilty of greater crimes, but that's no reason to pardon this particular one. At one point a character tells us that Yiddish is German spoken with a sense of humour, which is a great line - but our ears tell us that "Yiddish" sounds nothing at all like German, and quite a lot like French.)Although the film is a poor one, its plot ideas are good enough for sheer good will to carry us through. And the surprise at the end has the required effect. I'm not sure if I approve of this surprise. It served a more worthwhile purpose than a similar surprise in [a 1990s film I can't name - you'll know what I mean if you've seen it], but it was just as much a cheat.