SUBWAYStories: Tales from the Underground

Like the few other viewers of "Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground" who bothered to comment on this wonderful HBO "indie" film, I came upon it by chance (well, channel-surfing to tell the truth) and immediately became enthralled. A series of shorts held together by the NYC subway setting (obviously), by a wonderful framing device that brings the work to a highly satisfying and affirmative conclusion, and by a shared sense of found life, the effect of the whole is even greater than the individual parts although some of those were unforgettable.

Each of the stories were, like life, completely unpredictable and most were left open-ended: Was the stock-tipster (Jerry Stiller) a con-man or an unacknowledged financial genius? Was the beggar (Dennis Leary) a bitter Vietnam Vet or the cynical system-beater he was accused of being by the Lady in the Red Shoes (Christine Lahti)? Would the pregnant woman (Anne Heche) jump into the oncoming subway and would the calloused New Yorker with the headphones (Gregory Hines)notice, care, try to stop her? I could never guess any of the resolutions or stop wondering about their significance.

The structure of "Subway Stories" is somewhat analogous to the loosely connected short stories in Joyce's collection, "Dubliners." Each segment is a little slice of life that builds not to a rousing climax, but to an understated epiphany in which either we, a character, or both share a moment of truthful revelation. Although not all the stories are equally developed or intriguing, the whole production is characterized by first rate ensemble acting and direction. There's some great music too.

HBO invited the citizens of New York to send in their stories and experiences of travelling on the subway system – 1000's did. From these, this film was produced, using the real experiences of day to day travel to inspire this anthology of short stories. Starting with a man who learns the hard way the importance of following the crowd, the film continues with the Vietnam veteran who gets a backlash from the passengers, a woman trapped in a turnstile, a man conducting an affair on a train and a man who starts getting stock tips from an old man riding the morning train each day.

Not getting HBO in the UK, we are pretty reliant on what is imported by other channels; many of the biggest shows make it of course but it is less common for the many cable movies made by the station to reach the UK. So it was with surprise that I found somebody had bought this collection of stories and stuck in the late night schedules to be mostly overlooked and ignored. Loving short films as a type of movie experience I wanted to give this a try and I wanted it to be good and, on the whole, it was pretty enjoyable and interesting. Some of the stories are very basic or reveal their all as easily as a paid dancer and these tend to be the lesser films even if they do still have some merit.

However the films that stood out in my mind are those that capture the randomness of life in a big city, where things happen quickly that can't be repeated or ever relived, where you don't know all the answers and it is more than just a funny story that happened. A couple of the shorts here hit this on the money and are interesting and yet leave you not knowing everything so that it does linger with questions and so on. It is these couple of shorts (Miracle Manhattan, 5:24, Love on the A Train, The Red Shoes in particular) that make the film worth seeing even if the other ones are fairly ordinary and only really watchable without being special (Fern's Heart of Darkness and Sax Cantor Riff to name two).

The cast is impressive even if they are not all used that well and the quality of performances does rather depend on the material. Not to rate everybody but; KRS-One was a surprise but did the job; N'Bushe Wright was good; Denis Leary was impressive and convincing; Zahn was unusually understated as indeed was Stiller; I don't understand why Mekhi Phifer bothered to show up considering all he got out of it; Taylor and Rapaport make an average film better; Rockwell is an interesting find with nothing to do; Perez isn't annoying (is there higher praise than that?); Heche is shot in the distance and hard to make out and has her short stolen by a good turn from the late Gregory Hines. The rest are OK in support but really the film is more about the stories than the cast and weak stories aren't greatly improved even when they do have a good cast here.

Overall this is an interesting collection and I'm glad I saw it. There are no really bad entries but one or two are fairly ordinary and I wouldn't rate them if they had been short films in their own right; however the majority are actually well done, interesting stories that snapshot memories and half stories to be interesting and leave the audience curious but, like the train, forced to move along and take what we can from them. Not a brilliant collection by any means but the good outweighs the average and it is worth seeing if you get the chance.

I really loved these weird stories about the New York City subway, especially the one with the boy and the older woman, and the one with Dennis Leary. That's what I want to say about it. It's underground, it's a different world...go and rent it

I liked all the stories. Fern's Heart of Darkness was a nice little turn on a rich white woman when she was faced with being...well, I won't ruin it. Each story was a wonderful look at life and its tragedies, celebrations, and hopes. The one that got to me the most was Taryl Hicks singing to her dying mother. That not only sent a tear to my eye, but sent chills down my spine with the power and emotion displayed in her voice. There are rarely any singers that I would call even special in their talents, but this absolutely is the one I remember. Every time I see her portion in the vignettes it still sends chills down my spine and a tear to my eye.

The New York Subway is not just a transit network: it's also a place where all sides of that city's racial divide come together, albeit not necessarily in harmony. Even I have a collection of several Subway stories, and I was only in New York for 4 days. So the idea of making a film based on the true experiences of Subway users might not appear bad. But a collection of separate short films (each by a different director) always runs the risk of going nowhere, of offering underdeveloped plots and scenes that are meaningless without context: most of these stories end undramatically when someone simply gets off the train, and feel no more exciting or complete than the tales that I sometimes bore my friends with. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, my favourite segment is 'The 5:24', which develops a proper narrative despite fitting the overall pattern of chance encounters on brief journeys. Overall, however, 'SUBWAY stories' mainly reflects its subject matter: diverse, functional, but not exactly a place you'd choose to be without a very good reason.