Laughter is heard farther than weeping.
—Yiddish Proverb

With the American release of his 1998 Holocaust parable La Train de Vie (Train of Life), Romanian-born Radu Mihaileanu knew there would be comparisons with the Oscar-winning Italian film Life is Beautiful. "It's a little bit simplistic to say they're the same thing," he has said in an interview. "The concept is similar, but the movies are so different."

On the surface, the distinctions aren’t clear.  After all, both movies are foreign (Train is in French), comical in tone, and have won paeans from film fests around the globe. (Train won over 10 prizes, including the prestigious 1999 Sundance Audience Award and Best Foreign Language film at Italy's version of the Oscars, the Donatello Awards.) Both find humor in the unlikeliest of subjects, the Holocaust, and each proffers a life-affirming message. But, of course, Train can't be considered unique on the heels of Beautiful.

Mihaileanu bristles at the comparison. In 1996, he sent the script for Train to Roberto Benigni, the Italian actor/director who walked away with the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Beautiful. Mihaileanu wanted Benigni to play the lead role in his film -- Shlomo, the village fool and mad visionary who, in 1941, convinces the Jews in his Eastern European shtetl to fake its own deportation to elude the Nazis. They assemble a train that carries them on a fantastical escapade that’s right out “of an Isaac Bashevis Singer tale.”  Benigni lauded the script but turned down the part in order to concentrate on his own work. Mihaileanu went on to secure funding for Train, despite financiers who were skeptical and nervous about the film’s comedic tone. In fact, some accused him of being an anti-Semite and an historical revisionist.  As a result a year was lost. In 1998, Beautiful began garnering attention, with Mihaileanu noting its similar concept. Benigni denied copying Train in the French press, but he didn't address the issue in the U.S., presumably out of fear of jeopardizing his chances for an Oscar.

"He always said he wrote his film before, so I have to believe him," said Mihaileanu. "I don't know. I wasn't in his house...I have a doubt, of course." The director elected not to pursue a lawsuit, for a distinctly Jewish reason. "I believe in memory…I know that each morning when he goes into the bathroom, he looks himself in the mirror. If he didn't copy, he's happy. If he copied, he knows that. To know that and to look at himself, it's enough."

Mihaileanu also recognizes the thin line between imitation and inspiration: He himself admires Ernst Lubitsch, director of the classic To Be or Not to Be, another film which looks at the Holocaust from a comic perspective: "I saw it 20 times. Maybe I copied something from him; he's the master. If I could influence Benigni, I'm very happy."

The fulcrum for the film was Mihaileanu’s father. Writer Ion Mihaileanu is a Holocaust survivor, who was held in a Romanian labor camp. His tales of shtetl life enabled his son to recreate that environment within this film. Mihaileanu realized that he had achieved this goal the first day his father visited the set: "He was so happy and so crazy…He was running to all the extras who were Romanian, telling, 'Look, this one is like my neighbor, this one is like a relative from my family.'  It became real again for him."  Indeed, as one critic has written, “Mihaileanu has recreated the life and self deprecating humor of the Jewish villagers.”

However, his father’s tragicomic stories of shtetl life weren’t the only influence; Mihaileanu was a member of the Bucharest Yiddish theatre before emigrating to France.  Thus, the filmmaker was familiar with shtetl humor's its penchant for characters who laugh through their tears, a potent ingredient in Train. "Jewish humor has always been a shield against madness," the director has noted. "Comedy is tragedy's balm. We don't laugh at a tragic event. But we continue to laugh in order to persevere."

When Train was completed, the first audience was comprised of survivors and members of various Jewish groups, in order to gauge their reactions.  “The Shoah is a subject bigger than us and we cannot know what effect we have in trying to represent it," according to the director. "Each screening brings something new. There are those who will say that there can be no comedy about the Shoah. And they are not wrong. And there are those who will feel the comedy is a way of remembering the lives of the people. And they are not wrong."

Their response to the film, however, was almost unanimous. People were greatly moved by its vivid reproduction of a vanished culture that had found its strength in humor, stories and hope against death. In its first public showing, the film drew a ten-minute spontaneous standing ovation. Still, public success has not been enough for Mihaileanu; he wants his film not only to make people laugh but to get them thinking and talking:

"I am most concerned with serving the Shoah," he has claimed. "I am concerned with not betraying the people who died and those who survived. The most important thing to me is getting people to talk about these things, to keep the memory alive. Shlomo invents a whole dream so as to keep his village alive. As he says, he cannot forget their eyes. This is important for the new generation, that they don't forget those eyes. If we are afraid to tell new stories, than we will stop talking about it. For the next century, that is the biggest danger."
 

Mihaileanu was also inspired by movies lsuch as Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and Claude Lanzmann's epic Shoah. But even though these other pictures moved him, he realized a new film about the Holocaust needed to unfold in a different way. "My way is the other side of the mirror. Not the language of tears and sadness because I don't want the Nazis who are still living to see us crying. I want to say, 'You didn't succeed. I'm still alive, my father's still alive. And we are so alive, that we kept our humor.'"

     Mihaileanu has summed up his philosophy with a story about the painter Marc Chagall: "I imagine poor Chagall in his little village at the beginning of the century. When he painted a neighbor flying above the house. The guy says, 'you're completely mad! I never fly.' And he says, 'that's my vision. Because you're not flying but your mind is flying. That's why I paint you like that.' In each poetry you have a part of reality. Because the poetry and the madness, that beautiful madness, comes from the reality."

For this assignment, you are to provide your personal opinions of the film Train of Life.  Among the details you should consider are:

As talked about earlier in the semester, is humor an appropriate approach?

What do you think of the fabulistic, i.e., fairy tale-like, aura of this film?

This is one of the few Holocaust films to touch on other groups targeted by the Nazis.  What do you make of the musical gathering of the Jews and Gypsies in this film? 

What is your opinion of the fact that, even though the film is a period piece set during the Holocaust, there is only a fleeting scene set in a concentration camp?

What do you think the ending represents?  How does the ending of the film mitigate everything that has come before it? 

Below are some pertinent links to help you write your final paper for this course:

    "Beautiful Madness: Radu Mihaileanu Talks About His New Film, Train of Life," by Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

     Rev. of Train of Life, by Stefan Steinberg

     Interview with Mihaileanu, by Stefan Steinberg
NOTE:  Try to forget that the two Steinberg articles listed above are proffered by the World Socialist Web Site. I am not a socialist myself, not am I trying to push socialist beliefs on anyone.  These articles, however, contains some enlightening facts and viewpoints about this film without being overtly political.    

     "Radu Mihaileanu's Gentle Holocaust Fable," by Ray Pride, Chicago Film Hub

     Rev. of Train of Life, by Harvey Karten

     Rev. of Train of Life, by James Berardinelli

     Rev. of Train of Life, by Rob Thomas, Varsity On Line, University of Toronto