Christmas Day is a problem in our household. Most cinemas are closed and the TV offer is unwatchable so it has to be a DVD. This time Ray brought over his projector and because of forthcoming rail journeys in Italy I suggested Tickets – a ‘portmanteau’ film in which three directors tell three separate stories involving passengers travelling between Innsbruck and Rome. Although all three stories are distinct there is an overlap with a group of characters appearing in more than one story.
The story began as a suggestion by Abbas Kiarostami in a discussion with producer Carlo Cresto-Dina and editor/actor Babak Karimi. The original idea was for three linked documentaries. The other two directors who were invited on board were Ermanno Olmi and Ken Loach. In the ‘making of’ documentary included on the Artificial Eye DVD we see the three directors with their interpreters eventually deciding to make a trio of linked fictional stories. This discussion is interesting because it is Loach who effectively sets up the format when he says that he can’t work on Olmi’s suggestion of ‘three colours’ as a starting point because it is too abstract. Instead he suggests a story idea that involves migrants or simply travellers who are involved in stories that cross national and cultural boundaries. Loach is closest to the original ideas of neo-realism – stories taken from the world, not imposed upon it. Also interesting is that Loach is accompanied by his three close collaborators, Rebecca O’Brien (who attends the initial conversation), screenwriter Paul Laverty and cinematographer Chris Menges. The other two directors both have collaborators as well but they didn’t seem to have the same input from the evidence in the documentary.
Outline
The journey begins with Ermanno Olmi’s story in Innsbruck where an Italian scientist has been attending a meeting at a pharmaceutical company. Because of a security alert he is unable to return by plane and has to take a train. The train is booked by a PR person (played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). The elderly professor is anxious to return to Milan in time for his grandson’s birthday. He is very taken by the beautiful and efficient Ms Tedeschi and he fantasises about her via a memory from his childhood about a girl whose piano-playing he heard through a window. These thoughts run through his head as he taps away on his computer in a crowded train compartment. Olmi carefully contextualises the professor’s story by reference to the people around him in the carriage. It’s interesting that Olmi’s story benefits from the ‘open’ architecture of the dining car: the seat backs are relatively low (i.e. not the ‘airline’ style) and therefore the camera can frame many passengers together, allowing a kind of commentary on their actions. I assume that this is a deliberate choice of rolling stock as Olmi tends to stage scenes in depth. Olmi also shoots on a stationary carriage with back projection through the carriage windows. At the end of the episode the professor makes a humanitarian gesture to a family forced to sit on their luggage in the vestibule at the end of their carriage – and everyone in the dining car follows the action.
This same family is seen to change trains at Verona and Abbas Kiarostami’s story is set on the second train travelling to Rome. In this story we meet a bossy and aggressive middle-aged woman. She has several heavy bags and is accompanied by a young man who at first seems like her grandson. She sits down in First Class on reserved seats and is then involved in two unnecessary arguments caused by her aggression. She treats the young man badly and he goes out into the corridor and talks to a teenage girl who says she knows him and refers to a time several years ago when they both lived in the same small town of Bracciano in Lazio region, north of Rome. This is the most inconsequential story in terms of narrative development, but it offers a first glimpse of the three young Celtic FC supporters who feature in the final story.
Loach’s story (from Paul Laverty’s script) sees the three young Glaswegians meeting the young boy from the migrant family. They treat him well but a little later one of the three discovers that his train ticket has gone missing. The ticket inspector (who first appeared in the Kiarostami story) says he must buy a ticket and pay a fine. The three lads don’t have any spare money and they conclude that the boy they befriended may have taken the train ticket when they showed him their tickets for the football game between Celtic and Roma. What happens next becomes the sequence which delivers the resolution of the overall narrative.
Commentary
I enjoyed all three stories but they are each different in approach. Olmi’s story is the most ‘theatrical’ and the most complex in narrative terms. It includes scenes set ‘outside’ the world of the train. It does however also include some forms of social commentary. Kiarostami’s story is the most tightly-focused but the most difficult to ‘read’. He offers us an example of ‘bad behaviour’ by the older woman with ‘mitigating circumstances’ – behaviour that is tolerated and treated with some humanity by the ticket inspector, possibly because that is the easiest way for him to handle it. The conversation between the young man and the teenage girl is more puzzling in terms of its meanings, although it may be there to show that the young man once caused distress to someone else without intending to. The young man is actually carrying out ‘community service’ – I’m not sure if this is because he has been convicted of a criminal offence or if this is a different kind of national ‘requirement’. It occurs to me now that all three stories are concerned with some kind ‘service’ or action of generosity. Kiarostami’s story is simply the most complex expression of what ‘service’ means.
The Laverty/Loach story is much more obvious in its portrayal of the dilemma of charity/generosity. It is also the most clearly associated with social difference/inequality. The Glasgow lads are working-class Scots (played by three young actors who all got their first roles in Loach’s Sweet Sixteen (2005). They want to be generous but they don’t want to be conned. The ticket inspector is this time more officious (he has already had a run in with them because of their boisterous behaviour) and his humanity has been abandoned – forcing the lads into desperate action.
Deceptively slight, the three stories do make a coherent whole and they do tell us something about human relationships and our capacity for behaving well. I saw the film when it was first released but I got much more from it the second time and I feel encouraged to watch it again. The making of documentary suggests that the overall narrative sees the train as the locus for meetings between different groups of people and the rail tickets are symbolic of the ‘exchange’ of services. In the first story the professor receives his ticket graciously from the PR woman who has booked it for him and who gives him two dining car tickets to make sure he isn’t interrupted. He ‘repays’ the generosity by his gesture to the migrant family. In the second story the woman abuses the contract represented by the ticket and she eventually pays a price. In the third story working-class solidarity wins out over officialdom.
Official UK trailer:
The Case for Global Film 
I was fortunate as I saw this at the cinema. I enjoyed the film and the story and themes which cross over the different contributions.
I was most impressed by the Olmi film, the cinematography and editing is impressive.
The Loach film seemed rather straightforward in comparison and the Kiarostami is typical but did not have the emotional impact for me of his best work.
LikeLike