TRAIN OF LIFE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **
Gosh, wasn't the Holocaust a hoot? Welcome back to a revisionist yesteryear at the movies as, once again, we see how funny those old Nazis were. The idea of turning one of the most horrific tragedies of mankind into a comedy is an idea that has, at best, a highly limited appeal.
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, it would be argued by most although this reviewer still has some reservations, carried off making Jewish concentration camps funny. JAKOB THE LIAR, Robin Williams's recent piece of schmaltz, was an unqualified disaster using a similar theme.
Writer/director Radu Mihaileanu's TRAIN OF LIFE (TRAIN DE VIE) falls somewhere between the previous two films in quality. It is neither as spectacularly pretty as the former nor as spectacularly awful as the latter.
Set in the summer of 1941, the story begins in at a remote Jewish community, deep within an Eastern European forest. Being told by the village fool, Shlomo (Lionel Abelanski), that the Nazis are coming to take them all away, the villagers take his advice on how to escape. Half of them will dress up as Nazi soldiers and escort the other half on a train ride all the way to Palestine.
As the villagers sing and dance to zany music, they seem to be having the times of their lives. Humor comes in the form of people who faint from fright and other slapstick retreads.
Sometimes, although rarely, the laughter comes from the dialog. We learn, for example, that all one need do to speak proper German is talk Yiddish but leave off the fun parts. A subplot has a renegade group of Communist Jews pondering what good Communists should do. ("The party forbids free love without a healthy dose of ideology," one man says as he happily allows himself to be seduced by a cigar-smoking gypsy woman.)
As the story turns more serious in the second half, it is more successful. The only completely satisfying scenes in the picture, however, are the aerial shots from on high as the train cuts across lush fields of grain, accompanied by sweeping orchestral music.
Like Chauncy Gardner (Peter Sellers) in BEING THERE, the fool utters the most profound statements for the others to ponder. "God exists," Shlomo tells the villagers. "God exists, but ask yourselves the real question. Does man exist?" Thinking about conundrums like these will help pass the time during the movie's many slow spots.
TRAIN OF LIFE runs 1:43. The film is in French and some German, both with English subtitles. It is rated R for some sexuality and nudity, including full frontal nudity of girls and women. The film would be fine for teenagers.
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