The Train Of Life Review

The Train of Life:

The movie starts off with a ‘lunatic’ man, Shlomo running crazily, his voice playing in the background, saying that he has seen the Nazis in a nearby town. Once he gets into town, he informs the Rabbi, and everybody who would listen. A town meeting is held, and many of the men do not believe it, the absolute terror that was being told made them anxious and in denial, and many criticise Shlomo, for he was anyway the town ‘lunatic’, and who would believe him? But the Rabbi believed him, and they try and come up with solutions to face the upcoming events. Amidst all the confusion and chaos, Shlomo suggested that they should build a train, so they can escape. It is agreed upon. Some of their members pretend to be Nazis in order to transport them to a concentration camp, when in reality, they are going to Palestine through Russia. On their escape on the train there are many misunderstandings between the villagers, it’s all very confusing, they end up encountering real Nazis, Communists, and even Gypsies, then the community arrives just in between German and Soviet fire.

The movie ends with Shlomo himself, who tells the stories of his ‘train mates’ after the train arrived in the Soviet Union, Some went on to Palestine, some stayed in the Soviet Union, and some even went to America. As he is talking, the camera takes a close-up of his face, and he says, “That is the true story of my shtetl…”, but then the camera zooms-out, showing him grinning and wearing prisoner’s clothes behind the barbed wire of the concentration camp, and he ends with, “Ye nu, almost the true story!” 

He was imagining it the whole time, no such train was ever built. The nazis had taken them all.

We can assume that Shlomo was in this slightly altered state of mind because he had seen most of his companions executed, he was deeply disturbed and traumatized but still craved freedom and made up the whole story for himself in his state.

The film left me in a state of mind where I was questioning why these things happen, why is it that his idea of escape was considered ‘mad’ or ‘unreal’? We have been taught that any idea- no matter how “impractical” or “impossible” it sounds, is a masterpiece and if only one keeps the faith and belief in their ideas they can achieve anything. Art begins in the mind, a thought that develops further and further to create something much bigger and meaningful, and so our creativity shouldn’t ever be limited by humanity’s confinements and limitations, and definitions of possible and impossible.