Last Nights Movie, an Unusual Event.
Here’s hoping you decide to watch this show.
Night Train to Lisbon, the movie, is one of those rare pleasant surprises
Watched it last night after I spotted it on Prime. A story told in the ‘dark’ of political times, one of many, in Portugal. I really wish to avoid doing a summary here. It would seem to be such a waste of energy and space! Neither would attempting a summary of the political upheavals in those regions serve any purpose here.
After all, as a Covid engendered ‘home’ movie goer, I’m just trying to share about a well- made movie. So, just take my word if you will. If you find intriguing those suspenseful, time vaulting political sagas, this one set in late sixties, early seventies, I presume, this could be for you.
Please, let this not be ‘just’ another movie review… I’ve nothing against movie summaries, rather it’s more that I don’t have the ‘stuff’ to write movie critiques. This comes from the heart. Desire to share.
The authoritarian government, too confusing for me to follow or to unravel. For the sake of this post, please do not place any great measure of interest in why such painful moments in history abound! Take it as if it were a stand-alone story. Of course, it can’t be just left at that, so some background weaving is necessary, which hopefully adds a touch more of spice to this movie. And yes, it hooked me from the start.
Its first incarnation was as a novel. All too often, the book versions of so many of these very loosely ‘based on true facts…’ movies are, of course, superior to the Hollywood versions. Before going on, I should make clear that it was not based on fact… My hurried research could not confirm this was other than a fictional yarn. I think this being no exception. Having said that! The movie, done in dark filters, at night, creaky, European architecture we’ve become so familiar with over the years, sneaking up and down narrow, twisting, cobblestoned side streets going and coming from the various characters’ hangouts and hide outs won the prize.
Not to mention the absolute top shelf acting.
I’m not qualified to speak of this movie as though I am something of a cinematographer. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s because of this that maybe it makes for a better tasting sharing of an excellently rendered film. I’m an everyday movie goer. Could it be that Covid has made me an even more skillful movie fan? I can easily smell out good versus shabby filming quality, or what I like to refer to as ‘B’ movie making.
These guys nailed it!
If you’re a Jeremy Irons fan, then even more so, this is your movie.
Romance and political nightmare. Well done. Here I go again: maybe loosely based on facts, maybe… What more can we ask for?
The romance and love struggles made it all the more human. Love and betrayal betwixt friends, and more was gut wrenching. The brutal, political torture whose brief appearance reminded us how much pain played its critical parts in these authoritarian regimes.
Of course still do.
All the setting so beguiling, how could I resist? I couldn’t! I was dragged along not entirely willingly but like an addict impossible to deny as the sad, broken lives and dreams unfolded with various inevitable outcomes.
Do I wish to settle the emotional knots upfront? Not in the least! I’ll go so far as to say the movie makers did a wonderful job of depicting the scariest moments of countless other movies when the Gestapo did its awful worst at destroying lives, as did the Stasi of the Cold War Eastern Europe and of course the Soviet KGB. China, as does North Korea, needs mentioning here, but my knowledge of the hell lived during the worst of times there is limited.
Arguably my ‘expertise’ lies in WW2, Nazis, Gestapo, the SS, middle- of- the- night- time horrors and the unforgivable shenanigans carried out by the communist monsters of the USSR and China and of course Cuba and their countless ruthless ‘cells’ sprinkled throughout Central and South America. Lubyanka is just a screeching car and banging door away. My supposed ‘expertise’ sits in the observers’ corner of having seen too many of the movies from those terrible days to having read far too many history books. All too often depictions of those all too often icy, rainy movements as those evil powers went about, non-stop, in their nefarious activities in efforts to never relinquish their ill-begotten power over the oppressed populations.
For the sake of clarity, the closest brush I ever experienced with the scary clashing of extreme political right and left was when me and my family received death threats and that we had to leave El Salvador as quickly as we could. My wife was a US citizen and after the threats we went to her embassy and there we were told behind closed doors and in no uncertain terms by some rather gloomy embassy personnel that we leave the country asap. In the small room, sitting silently in a corner, sat a man wearing impenetrable shades. Never said a word.
Two days later, we arrived in Guatemala City.
Flip side to be fair, the never-ending efforts at removing the existing, ultra-right, oppressive governments in power all too often propped up by none other than Uncle Sam.
The evil doers’ use of fear and violence over common sense was numbing. Common sense, of course, ceased to have any meaning. My issue has little to do with who is or was right or wrong in the countless destroyed lives from that decades long time period if we were to take in WW2 and the now over seventy years of continuing hell. Now the spotlight, of course, on the Middle East and the incredible destruction unleashed upon untold numbers. Not just the Middle East, but the entire globe.
Sure, there are still large swatches of geography miraculously still relatively free or immune to the slaughter. Fear found everywhere. Hard pressed to list these, of course.
‘Lisbon’, the movie which inspired this post, invokes the worst of the fear lived in the authoritarian realities. For me, having grown up in Central America, the concern was of Castro sinking his fangs into the Latin world. What motivated him? Theories abound, of course. For me, it always ended up that it was Fidel’s utter failure at obtaining any level of success in converting Cuba to something good. Rather, his Cuba became a sort of land of bizarro, twilight zone, utopia. My youthful, teenage perspective admittedly couched in privilege, the absence of any actual material need to seriously motivate me, towards any form of potentially active rebelliousness determined where any political leanings I may have entertained would go.
Nowhere. Why? I was perfectly at ease with my place on the planet. I mean, beside a self-generated sense of injustice towards the poorer class. Of course, it was impossible for me to relate in any way remotely based on reality. No death squads knocking on my families’ front door at two in the morning by the police suspecting insurgent activities there in. I was too far, too comfortably removed from any such concerns. As I said earlier, my concerns were more with what might Fidel do to us, the economically successful, were his efforts ever to have succeeded in Central America.
In hindsight, let’s say the worst had happened. Let’s say a democratic government in Guatemala suddenly had been overthrown by a dictatorial Fidel rebel/military alliance. My parents would have asked us kids to pack a bag and in no time our Pan Am flight would depart that country forever, literally and figuratively high and apart from the veritable hell unleashing in the region.
Had Castro’s wishes won out in Guatemala these things and others would have followed: the free press outlawed, pro free market politicians thrown out of government, no doubt many slaughtered, all major employers of foreign origin nationalized overnight, (liberated), democratic vote erased, on and on.
Soon such things as youth clubs would have been organized in every neighborhood, led by idealistic and very confused youth to watch and report on suspicious citizens’ activities to higher up officials and secret police. Citizens would have started to simply disappear.
In my early teens, youthful concerns were mostly unfounded as I never became involved in anything political. My political concerns were mostly macro, global, from what I gathered from Time Magazine and similar back then. Depending on what reporter did the writing on a particular occurrence in any of near countless areas of concern in Central and South America pretty much colored in my perspective, my political realities.
As an older teen, Viet Nam of course took my thinking down new and scary pathways. But this was to come a little later in my life’s time line. I was already in the US, a prep school, as Viet Nam turned into a full-fledged blood bath. I can say that Viet Nam was the disaster that perhaps seeded a true political inkling in my heart. That along with the racial realities in the US, the assassinations of forward thinking leaders of the globe, MLK, the Kennedys.
These, of course, inevitably absorbed all my previous concerns dealing with the Iron Curtain, and China’s growing global strength. The still fresh memories a youth carried within about the still recently ended WW2. On and on.
Have gone much further than intended. But I hoped to provide the tapestry wrapped about me then and even to this day, the very real ebbs and flows of geopolitical hate which still abound. It’s no wonder then ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ could’ve had such an impression on me. Oh, not life altering, of course. Too late for that. The life altering aspect of this has long since come and gone. Whatever hells were unleashed in the past eighty and more years will remain in its various manifestations.
Even the climate is being held hostage to ‘end of days’ conceptual thinking. Blame is placed carelessly, right or wrong, even partially so on all the crap that continues to happen today. ISIS, the Uyghurs, the ongoing oppression against the dwindling Christians in Iraq, rich versus poor, the sex atrocities, on and on and on. Instead of things settling, they only seem to be on the rise, leading me to wonder where it all ends. Anyone’s guess…
So getting back to ‘ground zero’, the movie, and the political jigsaw puzzles which remain as ever before. How does any of this segue into something that makes sense?
Other than an attempt at explaining away ones ongoing confusion, I want to say, a youths confusion, my confusion, but seventy no longer fits this qualification and yet the feeling of traveling down an unknown road with no sort of map, or an accurate Waze is as strong or stronger than ever. Stronger because, if nothing else, the years have given at least this one human, a larger sense of the mess we all are a part of.
A larger sense of confusion and expected foreboding where this will take us all. Take us it will, either willingly, or kicking and screaming. Yet while this could find a home in the age old argument of the haves and have nots, sure it does, even in the so called political world. What religion then becomes a partial solution to this conundrum? After all, unless it’s forcibly shoved down our throats, red hot pain, a la fire place poker, being a never ending participant to where? Were it not for the authoritarian aspect of the political agenda what possibility does such ‘utopian’ promised lands stand a chance at survival?
Zero! Dwell on it.
The movie! ‘Lisbon’ stirs up all those old fears some of us older ones felt, some much more real than for others. Brings up those scary ‘Check Point Charlie’ spy movie endings… I can safely suggest that so much of today’s youth, especially from the west, yes the US, Canada, yes and even comfortably insulated sections of the large, modern cities in Latin America, though to a lesser degree, can’t relate directly to the fears and instabilities conjured up by such a well-made movie!
Beside it being a story of broken romance, hope lost, shattered emotions scattered about in the flames of our human made mess, there is a connect for those seeking to get at least a sense of the fear that flourishes when people are caught in the middle of the political tug of war.
For so much of the youth. Perhaps for those just entering the teen years, this kind of movie serves to enlighten, to give them a vista into what happened and what continues to happen today.
Besides a terrific love story, a warning… Oddly enough, it feels okay to add that this is just a movie. It’s a worthwhile movie. Things can be learned from such a movie. Things that young teens would do well to take in. Thought provoking. The quality of the scenes, architecture, the emotional stretching, all make it so worthwhile.
The cobwebs spun by our endless politics themselves offer potential lessons. The romantic parts turn it into an even better and even more worthwhile reason to go to the living room cinema.