Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru

I wish I could say I enjoyed it and appreciate it for the art it surely is, I really wanted to like it. But I ended up being disappointed. First of all, the whole movie (even the everyday life scenes) have a strange and uncanny feeling to them, and often even a creepy one. I heard many people liked the mysterious atmosphere, but to me it was kind of off-putting. I also think the pace of the movie is too slow, at least for me. It was kind of boring for a decent amount of time. But my main issue with the movie is that I didn't get most of the scenes in the railroad. They were just so weird - but (in my opinion) not an interesting or exciting kind of weird, but just a strange, off-putting one. The movie leaves me very frustrated because I can't understand it. I don't know if there is anything to understand, the scenes are probably just supposed to be creative and dreamy. But as I said, I found most of them pretty boring and alienating. The artstyle... I don't know. It's not bad, it has very pretty scenes, but there was also something putting me off again. The main characters have the same expression most of the time: a little surprised, but not very emotional. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll put it that way: There is a character with two kids who came from a ship, and he did a specific thing, that everyone seems to be okay with or even think it's good. I find the moral to be problematic in this scene. Finally, a positive point: I liked the ending and when you're realizing the real purpose of this railroad. So, this movie definitely made me think about it a lot. But there is still the frustration about me not understanding the scenes. It wasn't a bad movie and people who like more artistic and creative movies might like it. But the events weren't very interesting to me and it was kind of off-putting. It's a pity.

This movie was nothing short of a sublime, ethereal experience. A lot of the messaging was lost on me while watching and only after sitting on it for a while can I say I came to a reasonable understanding of the film. The films use of the train journey to explore loss, concepts of the afterlife and happiness being achieved through self-sacrifice was beautiful, with Giovannis conclusion that he will live like the scorpion in the service of others being very poignant. The movie explores varying forms of self-sacrifice and death for others, explaining why they either excel, fall short or built off a misunderstanding. (MILD SPOILERS) Take the example of the Tutor, who chose to die with the 2 children rather than save them as it would make their mother sad, this is definitely self-sacrifice and his intention truly noble, yet the entire scene and the framing of the character himself is very disturbing. This is because true self-sacrifice is not about whether you die or not for another, but the "how". The Tutor accepts his fate, he surrendered to death and to the dogma that told him that was salvation, perhaps why the framing is so spooky. The scorpion and Giovanni's best friend both act out of love, the scorpion prays its body is of use to others while the friend drowns saving the other cat. I mean that's about on the nose as it gets, the Tutor merely accepted his fate of drowning, making no attempt to save himself or the children while the friend goes out of his way to save the other cat. Perhaps that's why they stopped at the Southern Cross and not the "True Heaven" which is where Giovanni's best friend went. This culminates with Giovanni's realisation that love is carried forward best by living, so he resolves to live like the scorpion, in the service of others. (READ FROM HERE) "True Heaven" itself was confusing to me, the Southern Cross felt very "holy" whereas "True Heaven" was just nothingness, which doesn't sound like some place where someone who genuinely sacrificed for others would go, but maybe the point is one should sacrifice themselves even if there is no "gain" or "reward", I also noticed a mix of both Christian and Buddhist imagery about life, death and rebirth (like the birds becoming apples, or the story of the scorpio) and in that case perhaps the "nothingness" reward would be escaping from that cycle. Regardless of my shoddy attempt at attempting to understand the messaging of the story, I must say the movie had me captivated in a very interesting sort of way from beginning to end. I can't say this movie exactly "interested" me, and there were times I would check to see how close the movie was to ending but there was still some kind of fascination, I could not feel or understand the direction of the movie until the very end, and that is not neccesarily a bad thing at all. I saw someone else say this is a movie for dreamers and I have to agree. Bizarre, dreamlike visuals, music, sound effects, storyline. All of it was a truly unique experience that can only be understood through experiencing the film itself. Highly reccomend.

Firstly, I feel that this movie is not to be taken at face value- if you look at it based on just what they give you, you will be very disappointed and confused. You have to think on a deeper level about what each scene actually means - just about all that happens has a deeper meaning/moral to it. Secondly - this movie is very abstract, the music is meant to be jarring and the art is meant to look unusual - that just gives it its unique style and feeling. I feel that it gets better and better the more you pick at its scenes and think about what they truly mean. As a final note more towards the other reviews - I don’t get where people are saying that Giovanni and Campanella are in a relationship together, the movie has them as being friends (at least in the translation) or I’m just not getting something. All in all I absolutely recommend it to anybody that wants something to think about on a deeper level, although I don’t recommend it for people not thinking deeper - you will just see it as a nonsensical acid trip.

Just finished this to say: Huh. Not Huh? Huh. This was Non-Sequitur the movie. Not much would happen, but at the same time, I would end up asking "How did we get here? What are they talking about? How does that relate to what happened before this?" Mixed feelings is what's appropriate for me, did I dislike it? Not, really, it was cute enough. Do I like it enough to potentially watch it again? Eh, I doubt it. Though, I still don't know if it's going to be one of those movies that I'll forget after a day or it's going to randomly pop in my head making me question "wait, there's a fake Heaven and a real Heaven? Were those random humans on the Titanic? Did the Titanic victims just go to fake Heaven?" And I could go on and on about all of the questions and observations within this film. It hit me now--this was exactly like what you experience in a dream--which works with this movie actually. I wouldn't call the main characters cardboard, per se, there are little mannerisms in their personality that keep them from that area. Subdued and reserved sounds right to me when describing them. It doesn't mean that you're not going to be watching the two mains with the same quiet expression for the majority of it. And is this a fun popcorn flick, I ate popcorn, but I could see how this film would be stupid boring for some. You take a good chunk of time of slow "slice of life" before getting to the galaxy train bit and once you're there...you're definitely getting plenty of that train ride. So yeah, your mileage may vary a lot. I thought it was /cute/ (you know that cute when you finish an obvious 'very much for kids' movie that you saw with a younger family member), and I was perplexed enough to keep watching and wondering what the heck was going on or what was going to happen next.