From Whence the Train of Life
By Andrew Wallenstein
With the U.S. release of his humorous film about the Holocaust, La Train de Vie (Train of Life), writer-director Radu Mihaileanu is bracing for its inevitable comparison to the Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful. "It's a little bit simplistic to say they're the same thing," he said in an interview. "The concept is similar, but the movies are so different."
On the surface, the distinction is easy to miss. Both movies are foreign, funny, and the toast of film festivals around the world (Train has won over 10 awards, including the prestigious 1999 Sundance Audience Award). Both movies find humor in the unlikeliest of subjects, the Holocaust, and yet offer a uniquely life-affirming message.
But of course, Train can't be considered unique on the heels of not only Beautiful, but the recent Robin Williams vehicle, Jakob the Liar, yet another film that discovered the funny side to World War II.
Mihaileanu, a Romanian-born director living in Paris, can't help but chafe at being lumped together with them, particularly Beautiful.
In 1996, Mihaileanu sent the Train script to Roberto Benigni, the Italian actor who walked away with the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Beautiful. Mihaileanu wanted Benigni to consider the lead role in Train, that of Shlomo, the village fool who convinces his Eastern European shtetl to fake its own deportation to elude the Nazis. They build a train that takes them on a fantastical adventure worthy of an Isaac Bashevis Singer tale. The film is spoken in French with English subtitles.
Benigni praised the script, but turned down the role because he wanted to concentrate on his own work. Mihaileanu pressed ahead with getting the funds to shoot Train, but ran into resistance from financiers nervous about a Holocaust comedy. Over a year later, Benigni began attracting international attention for Beautiful, and Mihaileanu noted its eerily similar concept. Benigni denied copying Train in the French press, but didn't address the issue in America, presumably in fear of endangering his chances for an Oscar.
"He always said he wrote his film before, so I have to believe him," said Mihaileanu. "I don't know. I wasn't in his house. I cannot know what he did. I have a doubt, of course." The director elected not to pursue a lawsuit, for a distinctly Jewish reason. "I believe in memory," he said. "I know that each morning when he goes into the bathroom, he looks himself in the mirror. If he didn't copy, he's happy. If he copied, he knows that. To know that and to look at himself, it's enough."
Mihaileanu also recognizes the thin line between artistic imitation and inspiration: He himself is a fervid admirer of Ernst Lubitsch, director of the classic To Be or Not to Be. "I saw it 20 times. Maybe I copied something from him; he's the master. If I could influence Benigni, I'm very happy."
What influenced Mihaileanu to write Train first and foremost was his father, the writer Ion Mihaileanu, a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Romanian labor camp. His stories of shtetl life enabled the director to recreate that environment. Mihaileanu realized he achieved this goal the first day his father visited the set. "He was so happy and so crazy," the director remembers. "He was running to all the extras who were Romanian, telling, 'Look this one is like my neighbor, this one is like a relative from my family.' It became real again for him."
Mihaileanu was also inspired by movies like Schindler's List and Shoah. But even though they moved him, he realized a new film about the Holocaust needed to be told in a completely different way. "My way is the other side of the mirror. Not the language of tears and sadness because I don't want the Nazis who are still living to see us crying. I want to say, 'You didn't succeed. I'm still alive, my father's still alive. And we are so alive, that we kept our humor.'"
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