Tickets

The image of trains come to mind when one is talking about the most annoying means of transport.This has a lot to do with the fact that one cannot travel in trains without being disturbed by other passengers.This can be true about other means of transport such as airplane,bus or ship.However,there are enough damage control mechanisms on these modes of transport which enable passengers to face minimum amount of disturbance.No mechanism for eliminating disturbance can be found on trains as they are the cheapest means of transport.For this reason, traveling by trains is like inviting trouble before,during and after the journey.Trouble is also something one can find in abundance in 'Tickets' directed by three giants of three different film producing countries.They have directed three stories where viewers can experience longing for love,compassion and indifference.Lastly,'Tickets' would turn out to be a good learning experience for all those viewers who combine entertainment with a serious message.

Seems like Ticket didn't quite turn up to be quite a hell of a ride for me. If a Cinephile wants to see a good Journey film there are better options than this. I was awaiting to see this for a very long time and when i eventually viewed it was a disappointing watch. The settings and the characters are quite believable but the dialogues i mean common we do expect a lot especially when an Kiarostami, Olmi and a Loach is directing a film. There are far superior films than (Tickets) which involves Train Journey's that has been made by film directors and the one film that immediately stuck my mind is Nayak (1966) one just have to look for it.

Tickets (2005) was directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, and Ermanno Olmi. Olmi and Kiarostami also wrote the screenplay.

Almost the entire film takes place on a train to Rome. Each director presumably directed one of the three short films that make up the movie. There are, indeed, three plots, but the same characters appear in all of the three movies. Sometimes they're protagonists, sometimes you barely glimpse them.

Ken Loach certainly directed the third segment, about three working-class English guys who are on their way to a major football (soccer) event. I couldn't tell which of the other two directors directed which of the other two segments.

The Loach segment will tug at your heartstrings, but I thought the first segment, which was the simplest, worked best. In that segment, a scientist (Carlo Delle Piane) is helped to get home by an employee of the firm for which he consults. The employee, played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, is very solicitous. That's her job, and she does it well. However, the scientist daydreams about the young woman throughout the trip. We can see that there's no real basis for his daydreams, but apparently he cannot see this.

It's an interesting concept to have three great directors combining to make one movie. However, for me, it didn't really work. It's not a bad film, but I don't think it's good enough to seek out and view. The movie has an IMDb rating of 7.0, and I agree. I gave it a rating of 7.

Throughout the twentieth century, critics and filmmakers alike have often commented upon the interactive relationship between transit and cinema, interpreting train travel as a visual metaphor which fuses these notions together. In "Tickets", a film which unites three famous 'auteurs' of contemporary cinema- Abbas Kiarostami, Ermanno Olmi and Ken Loach- three narratives of differing cultural sensibilities are intertwined within a single journey aboard a train from Eastern Europe to Rome. Although there are noticeable shifts between the narratives of each of the directors, particularly if you have already seen some of their previous films, the individual signatures of each director create a unique tripartite and structure that breathes life into the complex human interactions experienced whilst on the journey.

It can be said that aesthetically trains provide confined moving spaces, which Einstein would suggest, are only relative to our perceptions. While the relationships between the characters in "Tickets" are often utterly separate, from a lonely professor dreaming of love to three Celtic soccer fans on their way to a Champions League game, by occupying the same social space the characters are intrinsically linked to one another. In this vein, the film adopts a particularly European sentiment that is closely associated with the emergence of the European Union. Yet, to imply that this theme resonates in a dominant manner throughout the film is incorrect. Rather, this an intensely beautiful film bound by a shared ability of the directors to convey the emotional subtleties and internal perceptions of the various characters, all of which are, whilst aboard the same train, ultimately traveling in different directions. For this reason, "Tickets" is a rewarding film that allows you to think outside the exaggerated and distorted realities imposed by many films today. It certainly is worth a ticket!

9/10

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.