(L'HOMME DU TRAIN)
***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-Francois Stevenin, Charlie Nelson, Maurice Chevit, and Isabelle Petit-Jacques
Directed by Patrice Leconte & written by Claude Klotz
2002 (US release 2003)
90 min R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2003
In one of the nursery rhymes at the beginning of “Wings of Desire,” the angel asks “why am I me, and why are you you?” Will our dying thought be of the lives we have lived, or the lives we could have lived, but didn’t? “The Man on the Train” tells the story of two vastly different men who look at each other and ponder this very thing.
Quietly into a sleepy French town steps the man on the train. He has spiky hair, is ragged and worn, and wears a fringed leather jacket. By growing old and doing whatever it is that’s gotten him the face he has, he has become the real thing to which poseurs can only aspire. Wouldn’t you like to know where’s he going? So does the retired poetry teacher (Jean Rochefort), who is chatty, a little doddering, and smiles sadly the way dogs might if they could smile. Living in the same slowly decaying mansion that used to belong to his mother, to call him set in his ways would be an understatement. To say that the these two men form a friendship might be a little misleading. It’s more like they negotiate to be loyal and polite while watching one another and wondering what could have been.
That the stranger (Johnny Hallyday) is a bank robber should not mislead you either. The movie is not an “Odd Couple”-style farce, although the set-up may be similar. The teacher and the bank robber do not spend time bickering over where to put the toothpaste, who should take out the trash, or what television show to watch. That premise requires each man to feel his own worldview is the superior one. But “Man on the Train” begins with each man being tired not just of his choices and surroundings, but even his philosophy. The tough guy tries on a pair of old man slippers, and takes lessons from the teacher on how to properly shuffle around in them so they will be threadbare and comfortable. When the robber shows the teacher how to fire a handgun, and the teacher misses again and again, a philosophical difference appears. “I’m getting closer each time,” the teacher remarks. “Whether it’s an inch or mile,” replies the tough guy, “a miss is still a miss.” The teacher is all imagination and possibility, but no action; like all literature majors, he sees things from every point of view, and always wonders about the meaning behind the world. The robber is almost like a farmer out of Lake Woebegon: things either are, or they aren’t, and there’s no sense in getting worked up over them.
Each half of a married couple I know has different views on art. She sees all art as persuasive, as trying to convince us to feel, think, or vote a certain way, even trick us. He sees art as compassionate and allowing us to ambiguously embrace two sides of a situation as we so seldom can in real life. Of course art is always both, and maybe “The Man on the Train” leans more toward the second. Neither man is fighting for his own way of life, and indeed neither man is very active in condemning his own way of life. If the movie is trying to convince us of anything, it’s to live while we still can. But even this conviction is embraced by an ambiguity, because by featuring such worn, resigned faces, we are reminded that no matter how much living we do, we’ll probably still be dreaming of some other shore when we set our final sails. Even to the bitter end, the grass will always be greener.
Director Patrice Leconte (“The Widow of St. Pierre,” “The Girl on the Bridge”) and writer Claude Klotz let their story unfold leisurely, in clean, stark images, with little interest in the bank robbery. They give the men’s dialogue a minimalist kind of poetry, and let them shake free of any potential plot contrivances (in a strange way, this is the movie that “The Banger Sisters” could have been). The score by Pascal Esteve gives the teacher a gentle string theme and the bank robber a lonely steel guitar, and the movie’s exterior spaces are cast in a cold blue, while the insides are warm and sepia-tinted. Johnny Hallyday, so I’ve been told, is a French rock star, but an older one, more like Mick Jagger and Johnny Cash than Justin Timberlake, and Jean Rochefort is one of the French cinema’s elder statesmen. Both are quiet, subtle, and as comfortable in their roles as old slippers. The movie gives them great little moments, such as the priceless reaction of the barber (Maurice Chevit) when the teacher says he wants a different haircut, and how the robber tries out one of the teacher’s pipes by crushing a cigarette into it.
“Man on the Train” is a quintessential very good “no big whoop” movie. It’s more concerned with being perceptive than sweeping, for being knowing instead of epic. It’s not enamored with its profundity and it doesn’t bludgeon you with drama. It’s content to ask an unanswerable question, examine a few potential responses, and then, ninety minutes later, you can walk out of the theater and say “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Finished January 8, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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