Transsiberian: Movie Review
Sins Ride with Along With Passengers in Brad Anderson’s Film
What is it like to truly be a stranger in a strange land? Transsiberian is about a railway line, but is also about a mingling of worlds, and two travelers who find themselves made stranger when their traveling experiences and their own purities and pasts make things go from bad to much worse.
To put it simply: Emily Mortimer is Jessie. Married to Roy (played by Woody Harrelson), she is a woman who lived the life of a bad girl for a long time before she met Roy and settled into a quiet but comfortable life. Roy is a charismatic young man with a love of toy trains who has never experienced the life she once had. That is why, when they travel to Beijing to perform missionary work for little children, Roy asks that they return home along the Transsiberian railroad: a train that travels all the way from Beijing to Moscow across the infamous Siberian landscape and a vehicle of Roy's child-like fascination.
As they travel along the rails, it becomes obvious that Jessie clings to her old life after all these years. That is why she is surprised to find herself sharing a cabin with Annie (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), who seem like an awkward traveling duo: Annie’s at least 10 years younger than Carlos, and Carlos seems more interested in Jessie than in Annie not to mention bears a suggestive deviance about him…
Carlos tries to bring out Jessie's old self but soon things go too far, Jessie finally confronts Carlos, an incident occurs best left unspoken, and while she clings desperately to the secret, it is made worse when she finds herself sharing her cabin with Russian officer Grinko (played by Ben Kingsley). Needless to say, a small trouble soon grows into a very large one.
Emily Mortimer does an excellent job, as Jessie tries to hold on to her vision of purity and displays it with all the right mix of emotions. Coupled with Eduardo’s work as Carlos, there is a strong dynamic between them that visibly comes and goes intentionally, to a point where you can feel the connection between them as well as the revolting sensation that comes over Jessie for knowing this and attempting to rebuke it.
It seems appropriate as well that Jessie spends a significant portion of the film taking snapshots with her camera. The movie, much like her photography, is powerful and beautiful. The Old World appearance of old Russian men and women with the mingling of Chinese men in business suits along the cramped corridors of the train leave an impression of the old with the new, and just how out-of-place Jessie and Roy really are. Likewise, the fact that this movie centers so much on Jessie's attempt to hold in a secret, that this movie's most powerful words are never so much spoken as much as expressed: not unlike her photographs.
In the end, there is a chance you may understand that this movie may have not fully resolved. In its own way, this is an appropriate verdict for a movie about secrets too embarrassing to admit, even to those who fully trust you and will love you no matter what you have done. Whether you actually sympathize out of understanding or experience is not for this reviewer to say.
You might like it for:
- Stark landscapes
- Suspense
- Subtle acting
- Point-to-point thrills
