May
9, 2003 | Charged with alternating currents of dry wit and existential
grace, Patrice Leconte's Man on the Train is a subtly magical
drama about the unlikely bonding of two men who come to see in each
other the end of a road not taken.
Craggy-faced
Johnny Hallyday, an aging European pop star (and occasional actor) once
billed as "the French Elvis," effortlessly inhabits the role
of Milan, the traveler of the title. In the dull gray of a November
twilight, Milan arrives in a quiet provincial French town, obviously
up to no good. Just as obviously, he has a throbbing headache. He seeks
aspirin at a small pharmacy, where he meets Manesquier (Jean Rochefort),
a retired schoolteacher who somehow manages to engage the taciturn Milan
in conversation. For no apparent reason - other than boredom, perhaps,
or a desire to hear something other than the sound of his own voice
- Manesquier invites the stranger to stay in a spare room of his spacious
yet gone-to-seed mansion.
Initially
wary, Milan accepts the schoolteacher's hospitality only because the
only hotel in the area is closed for the season. Over the course of
a few days, the two men share meals, gaze at the stars, talk about nothing
in particular and everything that is important. Milan admits that he
is career criminal, with designs on the local bank. Manesquier, ever
the gracious host, responds with a nonjudgmental nod and, quite unexpectedly,
a ghost of a smile.
Each
man becomes fascinated, and maybe a mite envious, while considering
how the other lives. Manesquier dons Milan's fringed black leather jacket
- and, for a brief, giddy moment, imagines himself a strutting Western
hero. ("I always wanted to be a silent brooder," he confesses
to his mostly silent, always brooding guest.) Milan slips into Manesquier's
comfy slippers, shambles through the rooms filled with books and bric-a-brac,
and finds himself amazed by his sudden contentment.
Milan
feels so much at home, literally as well as figuratively, that when
a student drops by for a lesson on Balzac while Manesquier is away,
the usually taciturn criminal fills in. "I'll be your teacher today,"
he gruffly announces, easily launching into a blunt-spoken tutorial,
even though he clearly has never read Balzac, or much of anything by
anybody else.
This
could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Unfortunately, just as
chance has brought them together, coincidence will separate them. At
10 a.m. on Saturday, Milan will join a couple of confederates in their
planned robbery of the local bank. At the same time, Manesquier is slated
to undergo triple-bypass heart surgery. Neither man wants to keep his
appointment. But, then again, neither man feels capable of avoiding
the inevitable.
At
73, Jean Rochefort remains one of the treasures of French cinema, a
tall and slender chameleon whose courtly manner and melancholy smile
serve him equally well in romantic comedy and heavy drama. In Man
on the Train, he infuses Manesquier with equal measures of elegant
humor and wistful regret, playing the retired schoolteacher as a man
who's reluctantly drawn to a final summing up, who takes a whimsically
critical eye at all the evasions and compromises of a life that hasn't
been fully lived so much as decorously maintained.
Manesquier's
relationship with Milan, along with the appreciation each man develops
for the other's lifestyle, could have been played for easy laughs in
a broad comedy. But Leconte (Monsieur Hire, Girl on the Bridge),
working from a finely tuned screenplay by Claude Klotz, is not interested
in the conventional or the predictable. Instead, he attempts to tell
a story of choice and destiny, solitude and friendship, with an artful
mix of tragedy and comedy that ultimately achieves transcendence. Remarkably,
brilliantly, he succeeds.