Tickets

Tickets deals with three different visions on a train journey, following three different stories that in fact interact with each other. The first part of the movie could be quite boring if you consider that there are too many symbols, too many voice-over, and not enough action. But the whole story is well-written and has a real narrative force. The second story is also full of symbols...this old woman seems to carrie a burden...we feel her despair and sadness. The young man who accompanies her, does not say much...but rather show his feeling through his acts...and this will explain his final decision... I especially liked the third story, dealing with the three Scottish Guys and the refugee family...i won't tell too much.

This is a good movie.

And thank God that his segment was last because it rescued what until then had been a dull, pointless film.

If his piece had been set at the start of the train journey, the other two sections would have seemed even more disappointing and excruciating.

I've always admired the way Loach has continued to use cinema as a means of social commentary. I don't always agree with his message particularly when it is surprisingly naive and unfounded (Bread and Roses being a prime example) but his films are always worth seeing.

Thankfully, his piece about a trio of Celtic fans travelling to Rome is the standout in this film in the same way as his contribution had been to 11'09''01 - September 11.

What had gone before it was pretty dire. First of all, there had been the story of a Roy Scheider lookalike Professor and a PR lady who inexplicably has the hots for him.

As he is about to board the train, he says to her that they have never met before even though she was with him earlier and booked the tickets! Maybe there was something going on there that I missed...

The next section involved an incredibly annoying old battle-axe, a General's widow, a man on community service who accompanies her and a whole series of boring, pointless discussions and encounters. One such encounter was between the man and a 14 year old girl he had known several years earlier that made me worry a little about where it was going.

In fact, it didn't lead anywhere at all; it was as tedious and unnecessary as the rest of that story.

Loach's work isn't one of his best but it was good enough to improve something that was pretty dreadful and leave us with a mediocre film that ended on a high note.

I would recommend skipping the first two stories altogether and just watch Loach's instead. Everything that went before it is really not worth the bother.

When I first started watching this movie I was looking for some kind of subtle metaphors but it soon dawned on me that this movie was indeed about people on a train. The interactions between people are like those you can see any day on the street and when in occasion there is a slightly more interesting situation the dialogue becomes stilted and boring. Its not that I don't get how this film is trying to portray the way people interact, it's just that in this film they are very boring. If you want to see and analyse these kinds of relationships you'd be best to actually go out and buy a train ticket and look at the people on the train with you. It is realistic but you wouldn't go to a movie to watch a film about you sitting there watching the movie.

An overnight Trenitalia Intercity train from Innsbruck to Rome is the venue for three short stories that happen on the same journey.

(1) An Italian bio-pharma professor returning from a day-long meeting in Austria is unable to use airline tickets to fly back to Rome and instead is forced to return by train. It's night and the train leaves Innsbruck. A scrambled time-line, surreal elements and the most exaggerated caricature.

(2) A young man and a general's wife -- an impertinent woman -- travel in first class with second class tickets. Straight narrative, filled with little episodes, and the most humorous.

(3) Three Scottish lads clad in white-green soccer fan T-shirts en route to Rome to attend a game are faced with the loss of one of their train tickets. Straight narrative and a view on the multi-cultural crosscurrents of Europe. It's daytime and the film closes with the train's arrival at Rome's Termini station.

In the confined and crowded linear space of passenger trains, secondary characters bump into each other and that helps stitch the stories loosely together. Of those, members of an Albanian immigrant family --Roma gypsies? -- play parts in the first and third.

Don't go looking for a strong narrative backbone. Instead take this film for what it really is, a caricature of train travel in Europe. Think in terms of vignettes: examples of the myriad situations that one may observe when travelling by train in the EU. The film is a sampler of those situations, but a concentrated one. Take it is a primer if you have not visited there. Buy your ticket and enjoy the ride.

I knew pretty much nothing about "Tickets" before watching it, except that Ken Loach was involved in it, so I suspected that there was going to be some social issue addressed therein. It turned out to be sort of an anthology movie, with a whole sequence directed by three people (in addition to Loach, Ermanno Olmi and Abbas Kiarostami participated).

The movie takes place aboard a train going from Innsbruck to Rome, and looks at the experiences of some of a professor, an elderly woman, and some sports fans. I could tell that the last one was Loach's work, since it was the most socially conscious.

In the end, I wouldn't call it the greatest output from any of the directors, but it's an interesting enough movie for its runtime. It sure makes one wish that the US had the kind of train system that Europe has (or that Japan has).