Meeting of two men

Carmel 2022-01-22 08:03:00

A French movie "Man On the Train" I watched a long time ago was translated into "The Strange Man", a fable. As a cold-faced killer, the middle-aged man is tired of blood and wandering and fantasizes about a peaceful life; the old man, as a French teacher, feels bored to the unchanging country life and longs for excitement. Two seemingly never intersecting parallel lines met in the last three days of life.

The long shots like line drawing, the plain character dialogue, and the ubiquitous French black humor, quietly telling the helplessness of life, make people feel extremely melancholy after reading it. Man is a greedy animal, longing for a peaceful life, and at the same time yearning for freedom of drifting, but can never have both. Every bit of romantic fantasies bowed their heads without exception in front of the cruel reality.

There are several memorable characters in the film, such as the proprietress of the bakery:
"I want a bread." "Anything else?" "No, thank you."
"I want a baguette. "Anything else?" "No, thank you."
"..." "Anything else?" "No, thank you."
Of course, there is also the killer who only says a word every day. It's all at ten o'clock, thinking before, and resting afterwards. When the sentence "Our lives are passing by like time" pops out of that expressionless face, is there any pain besides being laughed at?

Sometimes I suddenly think of something, a certain phone number, the stars of a certain day, a certain sentence, a certain flavor. . . But unlike Proust when I tasted cookies, I couldn't bear to look back. I am most afraid of opening the valve of memory and looking to the future. I don't believe in fatalism, but life is really helpless sometimes.

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Extended Reading
  • Oda 2022-04-24 07:01:23

    Maybe it's because I didn't look carefully. It's boring

  • Elinore 2022-03-16 09:01:07

    One of my favorite movies............Life is always in the middle of nowhere. When we suddenly want to change, there is no time to say a word......

Man on the Train quotes

  • Gardener: Nobody ever remembers a gardener.

  • Monsieur Manesquier: After playing a piece on the piano, turns to Johnny Hallyday and asks: "And you, Monsieur, are you musical? Ironic, because Hallyday was probably the top rock and roller of his generation in France...