TRAIN OF LIFE A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1999 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
For some, the very idea of a Holocaust comedy is a bit hard to take. The third one in a row is simply too much.
In "Life is Beautiful," a concentration camp victim pretends the horror is all an elaborate game (and the winner gets a tank!). In "Jakob the Liar," a Polish Jew pretends that a hidden radio broadcasts encouraging news from the front line. And in the latest go-round, the French film "Train of Life" ("Train de Vie"), an entire village pretends to be deported by train.
That's a lot of comic situations borne out of unmitigated hardship and a lot to ask of audiences.
"Latest" is, perhaps, not strictly accurate in terms of "Train of Life"'s chronology since Radu Mihaileanu's film was conceived prior to either of those aforementioned features. In fact, Roberto Benigni was actually offered the lead role of Shlomo in the film but he turned it down before going on to write, direct, and star in the similarly-themed "Life is Beautiful," a maneuver which caused much controversy at the time.
In some ways that short-lived controversy is all but irrelevant given how vastly different these two films are ("Jakob the Liar," a derivative, schmaltzy cross between "Schindler's List" and "Good Morning, Vietnam," is hereafter dropped from the discussion). "Life is Beautiful" is a comic masterpiece that successfully transcends its difficult subject matter by Benigni's brilliant ability to find laughter in the most harrowing of circumstances. "Train of Life" is an often amusing parody that more closely resembles "Hogan's Heroes" than it does the film which garnered Benigni an Oscar® for last year's Best Foreign Language Film.
"Train of Life" follows the fortunes of the inhabitants of an Eastern European shtetl who, after learning that the Nazis are at hand, come up with the brilliant idea of deporting themselves before the führer's advancing troops can do the honors. The individual who dreams up this outrageous scheme, that of buying a train, bit by bit, and dressing up some select villagers as German soldiers to make it look authentic, is none other than Shlomo, the village idiot. "After all, deporting ourselves isn't exactly normal," observes one of the elders when Shlomo's credentials are called into question.
This all works very well in the broad sense (think: French farce), especially when those playing the Nazis get a little too into their characters, but it's not nearly as poignant or sophisticated as it tries to be. Except, that is, for the film's final shot, an image so potent it effectively silences all the levity that has preceded it.
Lionel Abilanski, who plays Shlomo, is oddly peripheral (village idiots don't exactly foster empathy, unless they're played by Jim Carrey I suppose), but a fine French actor with the unlikely name of Rufus gets exceptional mileage out of his character of Mordechai, the person entrusted by the community's rabbis to lead their people to "the Promised Land," another metaphor which is handled somewhat heavily.
Daft and daffy, "Train of Life" rumbles down the track with much silliness and a lot of cute scenes to its credit. Compared to "Life is Beautiful," however, Radu Mihaileanu's film has a long way to go.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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