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The Man on the Train

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We imagine ourselves to have free will, but most humans follow a trajectory set for them by society, family, circumstances. While possible to alter his fate, an individual will rarely put forward the strenuous effort to do so.

In "Man on the Train", two apparently different men meet by odd chance in a small town in France. One, Milan, is a rugged, tough criminal, an adventurer, a "doer". The other, Manesquier, is a frail, provincial retired school teacher...a dullard, a dreamer. Despite these differences, both men are weary of their lives, their destinies, to which they seem tethered like oxen to cart.

Milan dislikes his rootless life of crime. Manequier is bored with his predictable, provincial life. The two meet at a time when mortality confonts each one. The criminal intuits that an apparently easy bank robbery could be dangerous. The school-teacher will undergo triple-bypass surgery. Death provides the impetus and the serendipitous encounter provide the opportunity for the two men to shirk their fates momentarily and live the life they dream. Milan can be a comfortable "bourgeois de campagne" and Manequier, a roaming daredevil.

In the end, both men, whose lives seem so divergent, meet the same fate. One remembers, while viewing this film, Heidegger's instructions on the importance of keeping death present in our mind, if we are to lead complete lives. The two heroes of this story-at least briefly-accomplish this. Johny Hallyday (Milan) turns out to be a much better actor than pop-star in this thought-provoking, nuanced film.

This is a quintessential French film, which in this case adds to the charm and the attraction. And the action is so leisurely that the subtitles are not a problem or distraction although in some instances they are not well timed or seem to be incomplete. The story begins with THE MAN ON THE TRAIN, Milan (played by Johnny Halladay) arriving in a small French town dressed in a black motorcycle jacket and carrying a case that includes three handguns among his possessions. His character projects a sense of foreboding, and we soon learn that he and some associates are planning to rob a local bank. Meanwhile, he has engaged in a chance encounter with Manesquier (Jean Rochefort), a retired schoolteacher. Milan essentially invites himself to stay at Manequier's estate when he discovers that the local hotel is closed. They are opposites in every way, Milan is gruff and his presence augurs a sense of danger and potential misfortune; Manesquier is genteel, a retired schoolteacher and gentleman of such ordinary habits that he has eaten lunch in the same local restaurant every day for thirty years. Somehow, a poignant friendship develops as they each see in the other the road not taken in their lives. Yet, they and the moviegoers realize that it is probably too late to change the inevitabilty of the events already set in motion.

The charm of the film is its leisurely pace and the attention to detail. We are constantly treated to small surprises and unexpected twists that allow for wonderful character development. Once such example is when Milan tutors a student who appears in Manesquier's absence in the study of Balzac. The performances are captivating, and since I was unfamiliar with either of the leads they totally assumed the roles in which they had been cast. Once I had adjusted to the slow pace of the story and the director's style, I was completely capitivated.

The film is approximately an hour and a half in length, enough time to get to know the characters and for the story to build to it's conclusion with increasing tension and suspense during the final phases but tightly enough edited not to become bogged down in details. The only drawback was that I thought that I was prepared for almost any possible conclusion but am not at all sure how to interpret the ending to this film . I can come up with several possible imterpretations, but can't discuss them without revealing too much of the plot. Maybe it would be clear to me if I saw the film again, but despite remembering it quite vividly and clearly and going over it repeatedly in my mind I am not sure what conclusion to draw. I notice that several other reviewers had the same reaction, so felt that it was appropriate to emphasize this aspect of the film in my review but strongly recommend it with this caveat. This is a film for moviegoers who like interesting stories and characters rather than intense action. It examines in the context of an interesting story the questions that inevitably arise in each of our lives about the road not taken and the role of fate.

At first glance the two protagonists in MAN ON THE TRAIN appear to have nothing in common. Monsieur Manesquier (Jean Rochefort) is a solitary retired schoolteacher who desires some type of companionship when he first encounters a rough-looking younger Milan (Johnny Hallyday) buying aspirin in the chemist shop. After starting a conversation outside on the deserted street Manequier ascertains that Milan just arrived by train and is looking for a place to stay. The other details of his stay regarding robbing a bank Milan keeps hidden, but not for long. Manequier invites Milan to stay at his house that is filled with antiques and old books. As time progresses these two men grow a mutual fondness for each other and envy the life that the other has led. They don't hesitate to critique and romanticize each other to the point where they begin to adopt each other's characteristics. Manequier offers to help Milan in the bank robbery while Milan takes over tutoring students in poetry and literature. Their lives become intertwined and linked. MAN ON THE TRAIN is a wonderful film filled with sincere emotions and subtle humor. It is a film that delves deep into an unlikely male friendship without all the macho humor and homophobic tensions that are often the product of Hollywood. There is a reason why I admire and enjoy French cinema, and this film is just one more affirmation. Recommended.

On a cold weekday a single passenger gets off the train at a French village. The hotels are closed for the season, but he meets an elderly retired school teacher who offers him shelter. The first man is Milam (Johnny Hallyday), a tough, middle-aged criminal who plans to rob the village's bank on Saturday. The other is Manesquier (Jean Rochefort), an educated, aging man of limited means who still occasionally takes in a student to tutor. He will have a triple by-pass heart operation on Saturday.

Manesquier soon learns why Milam is in town, and appears to accept this without judgment. As the days go by toward Saturday, Milam finds himself reading books from Manesquier's library, asking to wear a pair of slippers in the evening, accepting a pipe of tobacco to smoke. Once Manesquier is late and a young pupil shows up at the door. Milam takes the boy in and leads him through the assignment on Balzac. "I'll be your teacher today," he says, although he has never read Balzac. He does an excellent job of it. Manesquier tries on Milam's black leather jacket and holds the gun he finds in Milam's luggage, one of three. He visits the barber shop and asks for a haircut, something between just out of jail and soccer player. He asks Milam to teach him how to shoot, and wishes he could help in the robbery. Both men, so different from each other, accept each other for who each is. Each recognizes a longing to have led a different kind of life than what he has; in fact, to have led the kind of life that the other has led.

Saturday arrives. Manesquier goes to the hospital for the operation. Milam meets two accomplices and goes to the bank for the robbery. The conclusion of the movie is mysterious, elegant, sad and satisfying. Both men find, in a way, their new lives.

This is a movie where, for me, all the pieces fit together. Rochefort and Hallyday are excellent; both are actors who don't need dialogue to express a point. Although the movie is about paths not taken, it also has a great deal of wry humor. Manesquier is a man of few illusions, as is Milam, but he also is able to look with amusement at himself and at their situation in life. I think this is an outstanding movie. I can also recommend Leconte's Monsieur Hire, The Widow of Saint-Pierre and Ridicule.

The DVD picture and audio are all they should be.

Jean Rochefort (Manesquier) and Johnny Hallyday (Milan) literally drip with screen presence. Both of these men of course have weathered and survived more than 60 years combined in the French movie business. Hallyday, in his youth was a rock star and he had a career as such, comparable to Elvis Presley.
Patrice Laconte, the director of "The Man on the Train" needed only to put these two in front of the camera and they would/do bring to the screen a world weary, slightly menacing, advancing screen idol charisma comparable to say Robert De Niro and Paul Newman.
Manesquier and Milan bond almost immediately when they meet. Since it is November and the hotels in Manesquier's small town are closed for the season, Manesquier invites Milan to stay with him in his home: a chateau that Manesquier had shared with his mother while he was a French Lit teacher.
Not much happens but the blossoming of a friendship between the two opposite in experience men: Manesquier, a teacher, a pianist, an appreciator of French Literature and Milan, a gun toting adventurer more prone to the seedier side of life.
The film is shot in moody blues and reds by Jean- Marie Dreujou and the visuals are first rate. There is even a Bergmanesque transferring of personalities between the two men that works probably because we are brought slowly and truthfully to that point.
Laconte has made a small, quiet film in which two men, absolutely opposite in experience and personality meet on common ground; ground on which they can relate. It is male bonding ratcheted up a notch with love and understanding for these men, their lives and their humanity.

Like many French films, this one draws in many timeless themes.

The Road Not Taken
We have the issue of the road not taken - the question `What if?' hangs over both the main characters from start to finish. Manesquier has led a comfortable if not entirely satisfying life for half a century in a quiet village. However, he has his dreams, dreams of action. Milan perhaps didn't dream of much until he saw that stability was possible - there were places in the world where doors were left unlocked, and strangers were welcomed.

Opposites Attract
There is also the issue of opposites attracting, and the basic feature of human nature of wanting what we don't have - the-grass-is-always-greener syndrome. Manesquier is intrigued by the mysterious drifter Milan; the more he learns, the more eager he is to adopt his recklessness. Manesquier, on the other hand, has stability and subtle concerns that Milan has not experienced, and which provide a tempting sweetness. The poem Manesquier is teaching his young charge near the beginning of the film warns against complacency in sweetness; Milan understands this, even has he adopts Manesquier's lifestyle so thoroughly as to become the new tutor to the student.

The Odd Couple
Manesquier and Milan are a classic odd couple. One is educated, the other is not. However, the uneducated Milan is not unintelligent, and has a poet's soul. The perhaps-overeducated Manesquier, on the other hand, longs for the recklessness of a cowboy who fires pistols and dresses in leather jackets with fringe. Manesquier teaches Milan to eat proper meals and look for deeper meanings in feelings and poetry; Milan gives Manesquier the experience of firing a handgun, plotting a bank robbery (which Manesquier confesses has been a fantasy for 30 years) and expressing his true feelings toward others.

Little Things Mean A Lot
Manesquier is taken by little things in Milan's behaviour and being. Milan is mysterious, a great change from the changeless pattern of life in the sleepy provincial French village. His leather jacket, his ability to swig cognac, even his vocal patterns - these intrigue Manesquier. The simple things of Manesquier's life - wearing slippers, having a bath, smoking a pipe - are beyond Milan's tempestuous existence, and Milan yearns for more normalcy.

The More Things Change...
At the start of the film, one can be forgiven for believing that Manesquier is the coward, the one resistant or even afraid of change. Yet we come to understand also that Milan, the drifter, the thief, the impervious one, is also afraid to change, even when it is offered freely, as in Manesquier's offer of money instead of the robbery. Milan rejects it. He is as trapped by his life as is the poet Manesquier; ironically, one comes to see that Manesquier is more open to change - his scene in the restaurant attempting to start a fight attests to this, but the courage to change has come late in life, perhaps too late. Manesquier is very brave to take in the stranger Milan in the first place, the first indication that he's ready to change. Yet, things remain the same. Even as Milan and Manesquier grasp aspects of each other's lives (such as Milan shaving his goatee to look more like Manesquier, and Manesquier getting a haircut to look like Milan), things remain the same.

The Essence of French Cinema
It is almost essential to the best of French films that they have enigmatic endings, and this film fulfills that task. Do Manesquier and Milan trade places or not? Both are grasping at hope that seems to be embodied in the other, but neither quite attainable.

The cinematography is a bit grainy and dark, just as the cloud hanging over the characters is likewise grainy and dark. The sets are perfect accompaniment to the characters - tattered elegance for the poet, and stark plain-ness for the drifter. Manesquier is performed by Jean Rochefort, and Milan is performed by Johnny Hallyday, who give perfectly complementary performances, establishing their own identities and then losing them in each other quickly as the drama progresses.

Not much of physical substance happens in the film until near the end; rather, the change is spiritual and psychological, with most of the `action' taking place in conversation and nuanced scenes of metamorphosis.

Director Patrice Leconte has produced a minor gem here.

I discovered this film on a rack in a liquor store in Mexico and brought it home for viewing. It builds much more slowly and subtly than the vast majority of American disposable blockbusters. In fact it withstands and demands and rewards several viewings, like re-reading James Joyce all of your life. I have used it very well in French One classes, and the students ask to see it again, despite the undeserved R ratiing. I cannot see anything in this film which merits the Restricted rating, except perhaps it does not make fun of the French, except in a very subtle and wry manner. If the R is for language, hey, it's in French! And I do not see any obscenities. Heck, Shreck has more obscenities. Rather this film is filled with poetry, including declaimed by a ruffian to his former poetry professor who confronts him as a means of ending his old and sad life and only comes out a hero. This film is way to subtle for the average American viewer trained on blast-and-crash movies, but please live with it awhile until you can perceive its intricate gossamer invisible webs and resonance. The forsaken robber who speaks only one line of original poetry at ten o'clock each morning is inexplicably gripping and poignant and exposing the harsh light of speaking about him only destroys the compelling effect. This gentle film builds slowly to the bright day of a fulfilling and illuminating and revelatory ending like great films as Grand Illusion or Babette's Feast. I highly recommend it, as one who lived in France over thirty years ago. Its American R rating is incomprehensible.

MAN ON THE TRAIN is a minor miracle of a film. The quiet story of how two wholly opposite aging men meet, interact, exchange philosophies, and mutate because of a simple chance meeting is not only fine writing, it is also a virtuoso turn for the talents of Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday. Rochefort is a loquacious, bored, congenial poetry teacher in semi-retirement, a man who not only loves to talk about Schumann but plays Schumann on his piano in his very old and boring house - and reads and readies himself for a weekend surgery. Hallyday (a dark, sinister long term burglar) stops off the train in Rochefort's village, meets the talkative Rochefort and ends up taking up residence with him. Their interactions, soliloquies, shared meals, and exchanges on walks all prove mutually enlightening. The ending is so dear that to place it in a review would be a crime (!). Once again Patrice Leconte proves that the French "own" cinema when it comes to intimate and delicate stories. A brilliant duet for two phenomenal actors.

Johnny Hallyday and Jean Rochefort are superb in what is for all intents and purposes a two-person movie. But between those two, what drama! And comedy!! You'll laugh at some very smart and well-staged moments crafted by director Patrice Leconte.

Hallyway - face weathered (and perhaps somewhat distorted from plastic surgery) - is career criminal Milan. Rochefort - slight and sedantary - is retired linguistics teacher Manesquier. Through chance meeting, their lives cross. Each slowly admires the other's life choices:

- Manesquier takes a stealthy turn as Wyatt Earp in Milan's leather jacket

- Milan tries on slippers for the first time

- Manesquier fires Milan's pistol

- Milan gives a surprised boy his weekly Balzac lesson

The ending threw me for a loop. After 85 minutes or so of life in a small French city, the last five minutes can catch you off guard. What is Leconte doing here? Are the characters actually...???(don't want to reveal here). Unlike "Swimming Pool," you get it sorted out pretty quickly. It's a shocking but satisfying ending.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough.

If you think this film is a thriller, something like a caper film, you had better think about choosing different films. 'Man on the Train' is a good character study about two guys who accidentally meet in an unnamed local town in France. The film unites two unique talents, Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday; it's like the union of Ben Kingsley and John Travolta, and it works.

The story is simple, as is the case with this prolific French film director Patrice Leconte. Milan visits a small town in autum, where he finds the local hotel closed. He finds a kind old man Manesquier, who was a teacher of poetry there. Milan, clad in leather jacket and carrying loaded guns, has something to do in this town, while Manesquier in suit has been living in this uneventful place for a long, long time.

Between them, we see a kind of friendship begins. The two men, so different to each other, is attracted to the other's life, which they could have lived in another time or place. So the laconic Milan teaches the old teacher to shoot guns, who dreams of living a life of gunslinger in Toomstone, while in return the old teacher recites some poems which the visiting guest happens to remember, only partially.

The subtle relations between the two, who will not meet each other again after the coming Saturday, are the film's strength, and though the story is silm, and the pace is slow, the film draws you into the small, but delicately realized world of the two guys, who wish something, and who know that they won't get it.

Jean Rochefort, regular of Leconte films, gives superb acting as an aging teacher, who quietly accepts the reality around him. (And M. Rochefort appeared in this film, after the disease that virtually killed Terry Gillium's film. See 'Lost in LaMancha.') Equally good is Hallyday, who expresses the menace behind the silent pose of Milan, who must have seen nasty things too much.

See this as a good portrayal of two men, who wouldn't meet each other in normal situation -- retired teacher and man from underworld -- but in Leconte that happens in a convincing way. I think 'Girl on the Bridge' is his best, but 'Man on the Train' is nearly as good as that.

You see Maurice Chevit as barber, and it is a slight reference to Leconte's earlier film 'The Hairdresser's Husband' in which Rochefort and Chevit appear.