Word: mihaileanu
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...Mihaileanu: I don't know, but I want everyone to come and bring their kids. I want them to see how beautiful the people were. I hope the people will laugh, cry and sing a little bit; they will decide how the movie does...
...might seem oddly familiar. Winner of numerous international film awards, including Italy's prestigious Donotello for Best Foreign Language Film and the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, Train of Life is yet another foray into the human condition during the events of World War II. Director and writer Radu Mihaileanu presents the humorous story of an Eastern European Jewish shtetl (village) and its fantastic escape from the Nazis on a fake deportation train they build themselves. Never mind that it was historically impossible for such an event to have occurred. There is no ultimate reality principle in cinema, and this...
...Mihaileanu: The only thing I want people to understand is that humanity is wonderfully imperfect, but wonderful. We want to remain imperfect with problems, but we want to try to understand those problems. We just have to try to find peace in our souls. That's the message that my father gave me, that life is such a big gift and we should live it 100%. We should always keep our humor--it is the manifestation of life. We need to keep the humor and our identity and memory, our culture and people, and we need to open our arms...
...life and humanity through a comic examination of tragic events. But Train of Life, which was actually written before anyone had ever heard of Life is Beautiful, has earned its many international awards and praises on its own merits. It is not, by any means, the same movie. Mihaileanu takes a more collective look at how people react to tragedy, and through this study in optimism, tries to give us a broader and more hopeful impression of humanity. It is no easy task to pull a parable from tragedy using comedy, but Train of Life manages to charm...
...Mihaileanu emphasizes that there is no one hero of the film, but we do meet and come to know an eclectic array of individuals: Esther, the vivacious and beautiful young woman in search of a lover; Mordechai, the conflicted fake Nazi; and Yossi, a newly converted Communist revolutionary raising proletarian trouble on the train. Each has his or her own way of carving out a life in the midst of the madness. The whole village manages to keep some semblance of their joy for life. Scenes of sex, dancing and prayer are abundant, as are moments of despair and fear...