Review – Night Train to Lisbon

Night Train to Lisbon is about a bookish professor who interrupts a woman as she is attempting to commit suicide. After pulling her down from the side of a bridge, he invites her into his class. But she leaves unexpectedly, leaving behind a coat with only a book in the pocket. Intrigued by the mysterious woman, and by the book itself, the Swiss professor (Jeremy Irons) follows the clues to Lisbon where he begins to piece together the events of decades past.

This film unfolds like a literary procedural, and here I mean literary as opposed to being cinematic. The plot is both complex and interesting, but it unfolds a little ponderously – we get plenty of stylistic voiceovers from Irons as he narrates philosophical passages from the book – and wraps everything up a little too neatly. It’s also a little heavy on the symbolism: just as the professor starts to get involved in the lives of the people whose story he’s uncovering, he is knocked over by a cyclist and has his glasses broken. It represents how he has become too personally involved in the events, his status as detached observer now revoked, and he needs to have new glasses made up which change how he sees the world and how the world sees him. Here, the events of the film reflect the professor’s character development, but it’s all the sort of thing which is a bit obvious for those who know to spot it and pointless for those who couldn’t care.

It’s all held together well enough, though. Irons is believable as the handsome intellectual type, all the supporting actors give strong performances, the sets and locations are completely gorgeous, and there was some savvy casting involved in giving us young and old portrayals of the same characters. But I can’t help but feeling that this story must be more engrossing on the page than it is on the screen.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ds5L7qS85s&w=400]