Routine Pleasures

If you're a railfan or model railroader you will love this film. How it has escaped mention among the fraternity is a mystery to me. Gorin intersperses action at a model railroad club with descriptions of several paintings of Manny Farber. The film has a unifying theme, the 1930 Warners' Other Mens' Women, one of the best railroad films ever made. One of the paintings is titled "Have a Chew on Me", the catch phrase of the lead character. A theater marquee on the layout pushes the film and a snip of James Cagney in the film shows why he became a star.

The model railroad is the star of the film with the operators as supporting characters. There is no showing off among the members, just routine bantering during operating sessions. Great care was made to capture the action and the love of members for the layout and the prototype. The layout is quite complicated and has excellent detail. Model railroaders will want to watch it over and over again to experience all of it.

I don't know much about Jean-Pierre Gorin besides that he collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard in the '70s in the Dziga Vertov Group. I think I've seen a film or two from that era, but it's been forever. This documentary is post-that, a while, apparently, after Gorin had moved to the United States (which I'm assuming broke Godard's heart!). This is kind of reminiscent of the documentaries people like Errol Morris or Werner Herzog would make. The subject here is train/model train enthusiasts. I've heard it said that "buffs" are only interesting to others who may be interested in their particular interests. I don't think that's really true at all myself. I love watching people who are truly excited about things. Most of the time I am, anyways. These people, though? They are truly boring. They seem like perfectly nice people, but Gorin is unable to get them to seem even remotely interesting. The film seems to have come about from a dare by his friend Manny Farber, a famous film critic himself. A chunk of the film is devoted to Farber and his art - he had moved on to being a visual artist by this point in his life. Gorin makes himself the center of attention a lot of the time, too. All this seems like a ploy to mix things up and give the doc some life, but it doesn't work. All in all, it's too small and unassuming to be an awful film, but it's pretty dull.