Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by rico (A) on October 17, 2006 at 09:28:51

This film joins the handful of movies that can be described as purely "human", films in which race, gender, age, culture, class, size, interests, outlook, etc. are transcended and only the the basic qualities all human beings share are at work (other such films would include "Grand Illusion", "Tokyo Story", and "Ju Dou" just to name a few).

In "The Station Agent" Peter Dinklage plays Finbar McBride, an unhappy dwarf who inherits an abandoned railroad station in semi-rural New Jersey when his only friend, an older man who runs a model train store where Dinklage works, dies. The minute he moves in he is befrended by Bobby Cannavale, a chatty Cuban American who runs a hot dog wagon next door. Cannavale is filling in for his father and is relentlessly upbeat in the face of Dinklage's stony silences and refusals of every invitation for social interaction.

Dinklage also meets Patricia Clarkson, a struggling artist who is mourning the loss of a child and is also going through a divorce. Other characters are a librarian apparently interested in sex with Dinklage and a friendly black 12 year old who like Dinklage is an unpopular outcast.

Despite all these people sudenly in his life, Dinklage is soley interested in trains, model trains, real trains, abandoned trains, books on trains, films about trains, etc. The keen obsession draws the others to sniff out this obsession, gradulaly forcing the dwarf out of his self imposed shell.

The film is a comedy and there are many funny situations but more importantly it is about people and their need for companionship and the risks invlved in seeking it out. Highly highly recommended. Strangely, for a film shot in Super 16, the DVD is anamorphic wide screen and has Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.