MIFF 2025 Film Review - Trains
Images courtesy of Common State.
Trains takes us back in time to the height of the steam train era, warts and all. A collection of circa late 1900s to late 1940s archival footage of (mostly) European steam locomotives, trains, their destinations and the people who use them, Trains endeavours to construct a portrait of how intrinsic the railways had become to every facet of European society. As a passionate railway enthusiast I felt obliged to give this a shot, but aside from the inherent glee (and, in this case, sorrow) that archival footage of steam locomotives inspires in me, I felt so profoundly disappointed with this feature documentary film that refuses at every turn to effectively use its footage for anything other than a broadly bland compilation.
Trains opens with a quote from Franz Kafka: “There is plenty of hope. An infinite amount of hope. But not for us”, an indication of the film’s aimed thesis. The film begins with footage of steam locomotives being constructed, before following up with pre-World War I commuter footage: massive crowds of old-timey men and women board wooden-bodied carriages hauled towards festivals and other recreational events. It then, fairly swiftly, transitions to World War I—soldiers board an army train pulled by a purpose-built troop-carrying Stanley Baldwin loco, and haunting footage of a massive rail cannon firing upon a battlefield is shown. Inter-war footage is swiftly passed by in favour of a lengthy section of the film that focuses on the trains utilised by the Nazis for transport to the concentration camps, as well as their later liberation by the Allies. The previously rather quick cut and swimmingly edited montages of engines give way to graphic, long footage of deceased Holocaust victims, with a harrowing score directing the emotional intensity fairly well. Impressive and violent footage of bombings on railway yards and lines follows before the film quietly concludes amidst a small amount of ~1950s footage.
Trains has no narration, nor any on-screen text or intertitles besides the rather melodramatic Kafka quote, as well as a quietly simmering ambient score that increases in intensity for the film's wartime and Holocaust footage, and I believe this to be to its detriment. The film is not edited in any poignant narrative sense aside from a logical and chronological one, and when it wrapped up after what felt like an extraordinarily brisk runtime for the great breadth of history it was covering, I was left feeling rather unsatisfied with the broad narrative strokes of Europe's early 20th century turmoil and how trains are intertwined with it. As mentioned, the film is hyper-focused on European transit, and—aside from a single shot from the ~1910s that Naarm viewers will instantly recognise as the front of Flinders Street Station post-rebuild, which in the 1920s was the busiest railway station in the world—all footage from the film is from the continent, as far as I could tell. I would be committing the sin of asking for a different film if I criticised Trains for not showcasing a more multi-faceted portrait of how railways around the whole world unfortunately become appropriated as imperialistic tools of their states and corporations, but the film absolutely could've been something more effective with the footage it had–it just feels annoyingly surface-level as a whole. Trains feels far less multi-faceted about the inherently extremely multi-faceted natures of railways as economically and socially important arteries of society or as rolling workplaces, and is not remotely concerned with the physicality and movement of trains, much to my chagrin.
For those wondering what railway documentaries, or even pseudo-documentaries, can potentially convey, I'd like to point readers towards three of my favourite railway films: Railway with a Heart of Gold (dir. Carson Davidson, 1965), a charming time capsule and portrait of the Talyllyn Railway's early preservation era, A Steam Train Passes (dir. David Haythornwaite, 1974), a gorgeously-shot documentary-narrative hybrid about Australia's most famous steam locomotive, 3801, on her final year of regular service, and RR (dir. James Benning, 2007), an experimental documentary made up of trainspotting footage shot by Benning (who has a new film playing at MIFF 2025) that captures a uniquely modern Americana through the trains’ angelic interactions with the towns they slowly pass through. One notable difference between these three films and Trains is that they are all made up of footage specially-shot for their respective films (mostly, A Steam Trains Passes opens with newsreel footage of 3801's construction), whereas Trains is assembled from archival footage. This presents an inherent challenge for Trains, where it cannot purposefully point the camera on a shot-by-shot basis to tell what it wants to tell, but this is no excuse—countless documentary films utilise editing prowess to make up for this ostensible drawback, and in many cases, particular combinations of sequences of footage may result in something that is more emotive or poignant than the sum of its parts. If you’re interested in seeing beautifully shot railway footage in films that effectively incorporate them into a narrative of any sort, watch the ones above, and perhaps give Trains a miss.
One other note: Trains is one of many films playing at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year that are distributed by Mubi in the US (though not in Australia), and I’d like to direct readers of this review to the fact that dozens of Mubi-linked filmmakers have signed a petition urging Mubi to cut ties with Sequoia Capital due to their ties with Israel. While I am not casting judgement on those viewing these films nor even the filmmakers absent from the petition, I urge you to keep this in mind when participating at the festival or purchasing Mubi products.
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Trains screened as part of the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival. For more info, click here.