An Almost Perfect Vacation
Written: Dec 02 '08 (Updated Jul 21 '09)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Bang For The Buck |
 |
|
|
Pros: Beautiful scenery through the eyes of a photographer.
Cons: Graphic torture, unfulfilled sex.
The Bottom Line: "In Russia [and elsewhere] these kinds of troubles happen to tourists all the time."
|
|
|
| topreviewerman's Full Review: Transsiberian |
Here's a movie to make one sit up and think. We start with a perfect church à la (James 1:27), "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." They've just completed a "sister-city" visit to China where we see a slide presentation of the happiness they brought to orphan children, and they're about to head home. One couple, Roy and Jessie, decide to take the transsiberian train from Beijing to Moscow rather than fly with the rest. (She will pay a visit to a "widow" later on, but that's towards the end of the film.) This couple is the innocent Americans in a corrupt society, their metaphorical spotlessness portrayed by blank, unstamped, passports. They do have "marital difficulties"—in the sack she wants a mindless release while he thinks more in terms of procreation—, and we expect this train ride will be just the tonic they need. It doesn't quite work out that way.
At first it seems a great opportunity. Her hobby is photography and his is model trains, so a long train journey through scenic Russia should be, well, memorable, and it is that. We get to see what kind of people Roy and Jessie are. He shows himself to be the quintessential knight-in-shining-armor. He is solicitous of his lady's needs and will defend her honor to a fault. He's there to give her a hand when she needs it, and if he doesn't quite break down the castle door to free her, he does break a cheap Chinese lock. He doesn't defend her with a sword exactly, but he will wield a wrench in her defense, and although he doesn't spirit her to safety on his white charger, he does take her by train. He is patient with her shortcomings while concentrating on her virtues. "Keep your eye upon the donut, and not upon the hole" is his motto. The knight in shining armor.
Jessie for her part has a checkered past which Roy rescued her from. "If you kill my demons, my angles might die too," is the saying she goes by. The problem they encounter involves their fellow travelers Carlos and Abby. Carlos does not have a spotless passport. His is stamped all over. "When dealing with customs, don't stand out," is his rationale. Furthermore, his eye is on the hole, in a manner of speaking, forget the donut.
To round out the travelers, we have Grinko, a Russian detective who doesn't rate first class travel in the new Russia. "It is better to live in the dark than to die in the light," is his guiding expression. The somewhat appropriate advice he ends up giving Jessie is, "In Russia, we say that with lies you may go forward in the world, but you may never go back." A lot of the tension in the film involves how much of the truth erstwhile bad-girl Jessie is willing to tell in various situations. She does a better job than I think I would. The final (believable) advice we are all given is, "Don't talk to strangers."
In this film it is these pithy little sayings people go by, almost like the Proverbs, that become a handy guide to life situations. When Jessie is taken to an abandoned dilapidated old church with beautiful frescoes, she is in photographer's paradise, but none of the other tourists will ever see it. Similarly, Roy is in choo choo heaven when he comes across some old coal-burners, though nobody else in the party would even think to look. Likewise, in this movie of proverbs, I find myself in nerd's nirvana to have discovered some of the words of Agur, from the neglected 30th chapter of Proverbs, used as a running theme:
(Prov. 30:21-23) "For three things the earth is disquieted,
and for four which it cannot bear:
For a servant when he reigneth;
and a fool when he is filled with meat;
For an odious woman when she is married;
and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress."
The train wreck of this society (the earth is disquieted, ... and it cannot bear) was brought about by the confluence of these four forces: (1) "a servant when he reigneth," which was the drug dealer who took charge as a policeman, (2) "a fool when he is filled with meat," who is the vagabond drug dealer who prospers in an era of want, (3) "an odious woman when she is married," who's the bad-girl married woman with her foot in the past, and (4) "an handmaid that is heir to her mistress," here the misdirected inheritance of drug money going to a low level runner.
The movie "Transsiberian" turns out to be a good complement to the bit of Christian teaching in the movie Fireproof. Women have long been the traditional civilizing factor of stability in society, but nowadays a brand of radical feminism has claimed the moral high ground. Rather than confront them directly, some portions of the church have sought to fix society according to the plan in the movie "Fireproof" where the man gets right with God, puts loving his wife into practice, and after forty days she "blooms like a rose." While I am all in favor of loving God and of men loving their wives, here is a movie "Transsiberian" where the knight in shining armor participates in a perfect church, loves his wife, is patient with her faults, and it still results in a train wreck. What is missing, we see in some final scenes of a domestic example with children, is what is talked about in (Titus 2:3-5), that "the aged ... women ... teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands." If this domestic instruction is missing from woman to woman, then Casey Jones to the rescue will be like the engineer who can't find the fuel pump to the engine; it will stall out.
There is one little subplot that I might elucidate. Irkutsk is a sister city of Eugene, Oregon where I live. Although we share many similarities, we are different in size, Irkutsk being much larger. I know that if I were to try to find a lost tourist here in Eugene by calling all the hotels and such, it would take me a while to go through them. I can well imagine trying to find someone in Irkutsk. The delay in finding the lost tourist there is not on account of bureaucratic ineptitude; it really does take a long time in a city that size.
What do I think of the movie "Transsiberian"? Oh, I liked it, but then I like all kinds of movies. Would you like it? Well, if you go for Alfred Hitchcock where he brings out menace in everyday situations, where the people caught up in it have to resort to their own wits without expecting a calvary rescue, then I'm sure you'll enjoy this one. If you are looking for something more along the lines of a Disney adventure where the thrills are predictable, then I suggest looking elsewhere. If you just like drama and adventure, you'll get your money's worth.
For a fuller development of the above wisdom of Agur, see my reviews on Kit Kittredge for (1) & (2), Sex and the City and Lakeview Terrace for (3), and Burn After Reading for (4). For other of his words portrayed in film, see my reviews of Dan in Real Life and Mr & Mrs Bridges.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Scary Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
topreviewerman
|
|
Member: Earl Gosnell
Location: Eugene, OR
Reviews written: 83
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
BSEE, U. of Cincinnati. Ordained minister, United Congregation of Friends. Poet Laureate, Longfellow, Colorado.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.