This slice-of-life documentary follows the cross-country journeys of a number of riders of Amtrak's Empire Builder train. This route connects Chicago to Seattle and Portland, also crossing Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and northern Idaho along the way. I saw this at MSPIFF in Minneapolis, by the way.
The topic is near and dear to me, having lived my entire life in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland - all cities served by the Empire Builder. I've taken the day-and-a-half trip between Minneapolis and the Northwest 25 or 30 times.
Many of the highlighted passengers are themselves in transition from one phase of their lives to another: one moving to a new city just in time to deliver a baby, another having just reunited with her child given up for adoption decades ago, a young man hoping to reunite with his high school sweetheart after years working in the North Dakota oilfields, and many more. Many are anxious, but hopeful, about what awaits them when they step off the train. Some of the stories are poignant, there are moments of warm humor, and I won't give away anything else about the good people who inhabit this film.
The scenery outside the train windows is grand, ably capturing the varied scenery along the route: Glacier National Park's mountains, lonely windblown train stations, eastern Montana's breaks and badlands, McDonald's arches gleaming in the nighttime distance, various snow-dusted plains, tidy neighborhoods of St. Paul and little rail towns, oil trains stretching off into the distance, glowering refineries, power lines hypnotically rising and falling as each pole passes by at 80 mph, and the tall cities at each end of the route.
What I found difficult is how the setting jumped around - one moment we're westbound in Idaho, then we're eastbound in Wisconsin, suddenly we're westbound in eastern Montana (isn't that before Idaho?), then we're seeing footage from Dickinson and we're not sure which direction the train is going this time. I get that that may have been the idea: the film starts by informing us that at any given moment, several Empire Builder trains are carrying hundreds of passengers across the country in both directions.
OK, fine. But the way the film is edited, it feels like it just bounces around from place to place. Jumping back and forth among multiple passengers, including changes in direction, would not be a problem. But it felt like it jumped back and forth along the route too, which didn't work as well. Maybe a little more editing, so we see westbound passengers' progress from east to west, and vice versa, is in order. Make it feel like one eastbound train and one westbound train are headed across the country simultaneously. This would contribute to a feeling of actually progressing across the landscape, and maybe even help drive the narrative (such as it is). I heard other theatergoers whispering things like "wait ... where are they?" so I don't think I was alone in this.
One more minor quibble is that at 76 minutes this film is barely feature-length. While they're editing, maybe the filmmakers could beef it up with a little more footage.
Overall, the visuals and the stories reminded me of how much I've enjoyed this trip over the years. I can certainly relate to the "in transition" theme, as several of my own Empire Builder journeys have been at pivotal moments of my life. I found this movie very enjoyable, but it would benefit from a bit more editing.
