Tickets

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.