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Night Train to Lisbon

Night Train to Lisbon (2013)

December. 06,2013
|
6.8
|
R
| Thriller Mystery Romance

Raimund Gregorius, having saved a beautiful Portuguese woman from leaping to her death, stumbles upon a mesmerizing book by a Portuguese author, which compels him to suddenly abandon the boring life he has led for years and to embark on an enthralling adventure. In search of the author, Gregorius acts as detective, pulling together pieces of a puzzle that involves political and emotional intrigue and the highest possible stakes. His voyage is one that transcends time and space, delving into the realms of history, medicine and love, all in search of true meaning to his life.

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Lucybespro
2013/12/06

It is a performances centric movie

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Voxitype
2013/12/07

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

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Catangro
2013/12/08

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

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Logan
2013/12/09

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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Ian
2013/12/10

This won't be everyone's cup of tea. It's a philosophical (or, perhaps, more accurately, a pseudo-philosophical) journey by a professor who searches for the truth behind events many years ago and the people involved. Some says it's a more general everyman journey. And it may well be but don't get hung up on that.Although it's essentially slow-paced, the pace is perfect. And it does have lots of drama in the 'past events' scenes and the professor goes through a fair bit of drama and soul-searchin of his own.It has a top notch cast, great scenery and high production values.If you want a real story populated by real characters and are not averse to a little philosophical input, you'll love it.

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conannz
2013/12/11

In the first part of the movie when the Portuguese woman is tackled by the teacher character I felt that thud. What happened next is an anti climax. Instead of a conversation about what was happening we got a kind of non-physical shrug and some vague agreement that the woman will go with the teacher back to his place of work. The movie is about pivotal moments and about what might have been. It is about memories and places and while there is physical travel it is more about about experience and the alternate possibilities that draw us into the story. I did like the sense of revelation that the teacher - Raimund was on a journey to get in touch with part of himself. At various times he seems oblivious to his context and other times quite the artful observer but only second hand through the eyes of the poet whose life he is researching. That poet was a bit of a philosopher which resonates with our Professor / teacher character. There is a key moment early on his trip to Portugal where a cyclist collides with him and breaks the lens in his glasses. This is a very clunky metaphor to show us the character quite literally seeing events in a new way. His new glasses will take some getting used to says the Portuguese woman who is also an optometrist - a doctor of sorts. The parallel story of the professor and the optometrist is somewhat muted but it does counter balance the historical back story which is revealed to us through the memories of various characters using flashback sequences. What works well in the movie is a series of cameos from older actors. The philosophical tone of the book is also perceptive. The way we notice the multiple levels or layers in the story is also gentle and unforced.What doesn't work so well is way everyone speaks English when Portuguese and subtitles would have been a better choice. I'm not sure if Jeremy Irons is supposed to be Swiss or English but he does appear to speak Spanish and Portuguese as a professor of languages would. It is just I can't remember the last time I saw Irons in a film and he always seems to be very English so maybe a less typecast actor would have been better in that role. As a series of reflective observations on life and how some moments can bring big changes I enjoyed this somewhat oblique story.

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clanciai
2013/12/12

His knack is to tell fascinating and important stories by subtle understatements. He has done it again and again. Here a solitary and somewhat aging teacher in Bern, Switzerland, finds himself suddenly in an awkward situation, when a girl obviously intends to jump off the bridge he is passing. He saves her life with consequences. She disappears as a perfect enigma but leaves behind a book containing poetry written by some Portuguese. The last class the teacher Jeremy Irons held in Bern was about Marcus Aurelius and his philosophy, and the book left behind is very much in the mood of the philosophic emperor, so much that Jeremy Irons gets obsessed by it and goes to Lisbon just to continue delving into more matter for the story he obviously has stumbled upon by accident.The film is throughout held at a very low key and pace but at the same time remains inescapaby intense, as a very complicated love story in the shadow of the revolution in Portugal 1974 unravels. Bille August is expert at poignant story telling, and this might be his best film so far. All the actors are wonderful and compliment each other marvellously, only Jeremy Irons always remaining the same, and Jack Huston as the poet, while all the others also are played by parallel actors 40 years earlier. The drama is told with perfect constraint all the way, nothing is dramatised, which only enhances the effect of a very human and naturally tragic drama of intricate relationships. Charlotte Rampling makes a strong appearance as the poet-doctor's sister, and also Christopher Lee, Tom Courtenay and Bruno Ganz show up to finally bring it all to a proper and very satisfactory conclusion with the irresistible Lena Olin. All the young actors are also perfect.In brief, this is a typical Bille August masterpiece to remember and see again once in a while, because it's a story you shouldn't forget, and it is told with totally convincing pregnancy.

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simondclinch-1
2013/12/13

I am angry with at least six thousand of you who voted less than 7 (the minimum I normally have time to watch) and caused me delay in finding this wonderful film. Maybe I should submine the IMDb database so that I can cross-reference your votes on other films and generate my own ratings in a numberscape void of your numbscape. That said, I can now begin my review. It is often said that a film is usually inferior to the book on which it is based. And whereas this tendency is almost a de facto weakness, such films must be made at all costs, because films that are not based on any book tend on average to be worse. In this case, the skill of the original novelist explodes early on screen as the words of a fictitious novel that is central to the plot. There is an old joke, 'what is the difference between heaven and hell?' that compares the weaknesses and strengths of different European nationals. For example, in heaven the Italians are the lovers and the Swiss are the bankers and in hell the roles are reversed. Having lived in Switzerland, I have to disagree with such stereotypes. And indeed, this story does a good job in exploding such myths, for the central character is Swiss and while demonstrating a quiet, deferential manner, reveals increasingly the intense passion he feels as the story unfolds, as indeed it does for the viewer, who should I would hope empathise to some degree.It is almost a rule of novel-writing that a story be told in the words of its characters. Films rarely manage to include the unspoken words, but this masterpiece uses many clever tricks to work around that problem seamlessly, that is to say, without exposing the inner workings of the writer's kitchen.The story begins in Bern where a teacher on his way to school encounters a Portuguese woman about to kill herself and who has also dropped a book on the ground. And from there all the way to the end and actually beyond, the film jumps headfirst into the depths of mystery. The teacher (Irons) follows a trail of clues laid out in the book from Bern to Lisbon, unfolding a story from the past of romance and revolution underpinned by eloquent passages of philosophical thought. I say that instead of philosophy, because they are very different things. A philosopher is a person who seeks answers to questions about fundamental laws and the human condition, whereas philosophy is the bureaucracy of categorizing such answers without understanding them beyond a level too superficial to be called philosophical.Needless to say, it was the words of Amadeu, the fictional writer at the centre of this story that lifted me to such a philosophical level. I cannot recall watching a film quite like it!Of course it helps to have a superstar cast which also was not apparent from the IMDb header! One either has to read the whole cast list or watch the film to realise how many heavy hitters are hiding in there!

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