‘Thomas and the Magic Railroad’ was the first film I saw in the cinema, and I’m proud of that
Isometimes wish I could say the first film I saw in a cinema (*consciously — as an infant I was involuntarily taken to see Alexandre Sokurov’s Mother and Son) was one of the ‘definitive’ classics: a Mary Poppins or a Singin’ in the Rain; but, in reality, it was the 2000 film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. It may sound like an underwhelming, unsubstantial answer: a cash-in tie-in to a TV show. But Railroad is actually a delightful childrens’ film, and my love for it remains as pathological as ever today as it was 17 years ago, on my third birthday, when my parents took me to see it in what is now the IMC Dun Laoghaire.
I have small flashes of memory from my third birthday — these are pretty much the earliest memories I have. Walking into the screen where Railroad was showing, the Icon Pictures ident, the villainous Diesel 10 projected massively on the screen. It would be a shame if a film which occupies such a significant place in my life was actually rubbish, but Railroad is genuinely really good. It serves as spin-off to both the UK series Thomas the Tank Engine and the US programme Shining Time Station, which tells a similarly ferroequinological story but incorporates native American culture and the magnificent landscapes of northeastern California into its canon.
Alec Baldwin stars as Mr. Conductor, a teeny tiny man who lives in a two-dimensional painting of a house in Shining Time, who is called upon to deputise for Sir Topham Hat/the Fat Controller on the island of Sodor. Baldwin is fantastic in this film; it began my lifelong adoration of his work. He teleports between the two locations using his sparkle magic, interacting with children, dogs and Didi Conn’s station manager Stacy. Sometimes he makes direct addresses to the audience. He gets stuck to a turning windmill, in the film’s most gripping action setpiece. And, in a sequence of pure comedic genius, he has a phone conversation with Sir Topham Hat, whose dialect consists of a series of gruff ‘harrumphs’. There’s a delightful surrealism to the whole thing: Mr. Conductor speaks to his Scottish cousin C Jr. through a flower, with C Jr. using a ‘shell phone’ on a beach while eating an ice-cream cone four times his size. (Additionally, it seems unlikely that — four seconds after they meet — a boy would invite a girl to ride horseback with him, but whatever…)
Meanwhile, Peter Fonda is suffering an existential crisis while keeping his damaged train under a mountain, until his optimistic granddaughter (Mara Wilson) comes to visit and awakens his sense of wonder. The music in the film, composed by Hummie Mann after John Barry dropped up (but, I assume, composed some early melodies), is beautiful, and moves me in strange ways whenever I hear it.
Magic Railroad is a film I will always associate with birthdays, with ageing, with my relationship with my parents as a young child, and watching it often stirs up my fear of death. Yeah, a Thomas the Tank Engine movie. But I don’t think of it as that. Thomas, honestly, isn’t in the film all that much; the Thomas-vs-Diesel 10 elements are the least interesting parts; I watch this for Baldwin, for Fonda, for the music. And they all hold up spectacularly, 17 years on.
