MAN ON THE TRAIN

A Film Freak Central DVD Review by Walter Chaw & Bill Chambers

MAN ON THE TRAIN (L'Homme du train) (2003)
*** (out of four)

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starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-François Stévenin, Charlie Nelson
screenplay by Claude Klotz
directed by Patrice Leconte

The DVD

Considering that the DVD of Patrice Leconte's Man on the Train available for import from France includes Dolby Digital and DTS listening modes, a director's commentary, an hour-long making-of documentary, another twenty minutes of cast and crew interviews, filmographies, photo galleries, and the trailer, Paramount's disenchantingly (if typically) barren North American disc is a crushing disappointment. Was it a rights thing or were they just cutting their losses? If the latter: doing that repeatedly only breeds consumer contempt towards your general product. Nevertheless, I found the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer attractive; my best guess is that Leconte applied the silver retention process, resulting in harsh grain and contrast. Whatever the case, the charcoal appearance of the image tones down the film's sentimentality. The French Dolby Digital 5.1 mix ("ENGLISH SUBTITLES" is splashed across the bottom of the front cover like a warning label) is brilliantly clear though never very showy, even during gunplay. There are, as mentioned, no extras.-

The Film

Patrice Leconte is a sort of Gallic Kieslowski, navigating the same allegorical waters of paradox and poetry as the Polish master, mingling the tantalizingly possible with the burden of destiny and the slippery calculus of serendipity. As obsessive a chronicler of obsession as anyone working in modern cinema, Leconte's films have a surprising lightness to them, a certain sense of humour one part gallows, one part farce. Though not nearly so accomplished as his The Widow of St. Pierre nor his obsessive Monsieur Hire (nor, really, his underestimated The Hairdresser's Husband), Man on the Train is essentially a blue mood on celluloid, capturing the myth of the American western in dual implosions of quiet regret. Manesquier (Jean Rochefort) is a retired poetry teacher wiling away his last hours in a home he shared with his late mother. While lingering at a pharmacy around closing time one night, he encounters the titular man from a train, Milan (French pop icon Johnny Hallyday), who needs some water for his aspirin and then, after discovering that the only hotel in Manesquier's sleepy town is closed for the season, a place to stay. Over the course of a weekend, the two men embark on a Persona-esque journey of transference and self-discovery, though one ecstatically unburdened by Bergman's terrifying existential gravitas. A moment in which Manesquier dons Milan's leather jacket and plays Wyatt Earp to a mirror is set in wry counterpoint to a moment wherein Milan marvels at the comfort of slippers before deciding to tutor one of Manesquier's young charges on the intricacies of Balzac.

The picture is at its heart as simple as two lonesome men finding in each other the means to a resolution of a lifetime's regret at paths not taken and choices not made. Milan the criminal finds in Manesquier a life of positive sway (the old man tries to start a fight in a crowded café to a surprising, and lovely, end), and Manesquier finds in Milan the cowboy with which France seems to have had a love/hate relationship since the heyday of the Nouvelle Vague. If it's possible to extend the small questions of Man on the Train to encompass the widening gulf between our two nations, more's the better, but the picture, and Leconte (and screenwriter Claude Klotz, Rochefort's and Leconte's collaborator on The Hairdresser's Husband), seem more interested in how sometimes the life is, in fact, greener not for the living, but for the life of the mind.- (excerpted from a longer review found here)

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.

Man on the Train cover
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DVD GRADES:
Image A
Sound A

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
90 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
French DD 5.1,
French Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Paramount