Night Train to Lisbon

     

I watched a movie last night about a Swiss man who saves a girl from jumping off a bridge by shouting at her and grabbing her before right before she leaps. This gentle man turns out to be a school teacher on his way to class. He brings the girl along just to keep an eye on her. She bolts from his classroom though just a few minutes into his lecture and he pursues hoping to return the coat she left in his classroom. He discovers a book in her coat pocket with a ticket to Lisbon tucked inside the pages. He rushes to the station and hops on the train hoping to catch her, return the coat and do…what?--the viewer isn’t sure. Returning a coat to someone is a nice gesture but hoping a train from Bern to Lisbon to do so is mad. Something else is driving this man and the book that contained the ticket is the catalyst to exploring a new city, new story and a new personality for Raimund. The book is rare; less than 100 were printed, we find out after the author’s sister explains the origin of the book, the life and times of the author and why he never wrote another. But the main point of the movie is how the book becomes an engine for transformation in the shy and frumpy Swiss lecturer. Within the framework of the main story, an older man following a young girl across Europe, lies a complex political, philosophical and romantic narrative that feels unfinished despite having happened over 40 years ago. In the process of searching for the girl, Raimund peels back the historical layers of a resistance movement from the early 1970’s in Lisbon that the book’s author was a part of. Many of the characters from the book are still alive, as he discovers, and many live in and around the Lisbon. Most don’t like to talk about the past, especially since much of what they did was illegal. Raimund manages to solve some mysteries surrounding the fate of the resistance and how Amadeu do Prada died by tracking down people who knew him.

The film uses flashbacks throughout the movie to fill in the missing pieces of the now dead author; the audience discovers it as Raimund does. One scene involves Amadeu giving a speech to his classmates in which he basically disavows religion and God in general and replaces it with some mix of humanism and communalism. This should be a high point in the film but it just feels messy and needlessly subversive. The passion is there but the pointed words miss their mark. This is a Catholic school where liberal studies are frowned upon or banned outright. Amadeu and his buddy are free thinkers among a group of bright students but the supposed oppression from the priests never materializes. The audience is expected to take it on, ahem, faith that these guys keep students in fear to God and the state—almost no distinction is made between religious control and state control. We understand the intellectual discovery the boys undergo but can’t sympathize with their rebellious zeal. Hence the speech Amadeu delivers in church that sets the tone for the trajectory of rebellion among the Portuguese youth and the subsequent resistance against the fascist government.

I found it difficult to follow the philosophical underpinning of the movie. We hear words from Amadeu’s book (the one Raimund found) read aloud during countless flashback scenes as a narration device. The philosophy of the man and everything he wrote is supposed to drive the film as discoveries are made about human character, love and friendship. The words are philosophical reflections on existence as the characters move toward crisis. But the deep thoughts of Amadeu do Prada come off empty and insignificant. We can see the effect the book has on Raimund who is enraptured with discovering the author’s life and times. Indeed, Raimund is becoming a new creature; one with a purpose and joy and an engaging woman to share it with. No real attempt is made to connect Raimund’s journey to Amadeu’s or to show the viewer why the book has such a positive influence on Raimund. Two separate stories are told with only marginal similarities between Amadeu and Raimund, the past and the present. Raimund’s journey is possible after the discovery and intrigue brought about by the book, but the real spirit of the age is not effectively present in the unsuspecting teacher.

As a Christian I’ve always been bothered by films and novels that present Godlessness as virtue. Secular humanism, the idea that human intelligence is supreme, ignores the supernatural world and the very real battle between good and evil. Always presented as light, the truth that humanism shields people from has the power to save them. Mainly, that only through belief in Christ, and acceptance of His death and resurrection, can a person be redeemed and brought into the light. True darkness is believing that only through human reason and scientific curiosity can a person be enlightened and fulfilled. In oppressive governments the Church frequently becomes an engine of the state so that no distinction is made between the two; one supports and legitimizes the other. During the middle ages the Pope played the role of king maker by supporting princes, or their rivals, in their quest for the throne. Preachers in the Antebellum South supported the institution of slavery as necessary for educating and saving the ‘heathen’. In Night Train to Lisbon the church is an institution for educating but one that also works to keep literature (Das Kapital, Thus Spoke Zarathustra) that is contrary to belief in God out of the hands of students—least they see the ‘true’ light. Religion in this context is to be cast aside like iron shackles bolted to the wall of government control.

Amadeu do Prada experiences liberation and freedom, love and indifference in his short life. Raimund stumbles onto the same path and completes some of the work that Amadeu was never able to, but comes to the same humanistic conclusions about life and purpose.  How sad it is to be presented with only two choices in life; both of which lead to destruction. The ordered gloomy existence of a life spent in solitude is equal in misery to a carefree life unmoored from substantive believe. Thankfully we have another choice: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV).