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.

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.

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.

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.

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.