Tickets-A journey of revelations

Tickets (directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarastomi, Ken Loach)
Tickets in a collection of three stories sewn into one, all juxtaposed inside a European train travelling from Austria to Rome. Well apparently it might look conventional by choosing train-an already overused metaphor for “life going on” as the backdrop for the stories. But further down, you would feel that no better place would have suited the stories.
For me, Tickets is a journey of revelation, a journey of emancipation of your own struggles, ideas and confusions, getting rid of the dilemma, confusion, mistrust, hesitation, which constantly overwhelm us, guised as social mores. Tickets can be a journey for liberation of the “soul” beyond the restriction of your class identity and becoming more “humane.”
Hence, in the first story, by Italian director, Ermanno Olmi, the old, professor, who had been hesitant in even expressing his liking through an e-mail to the Austrian P.A. gets rid of this inertia and reaches out to help the family, caught in the train vestibule. Professor had found the Austrian P.A, who booked him tickets in the train, to be angel of a person. She was thoughtful enough to book two seats for his comfort and also to have timely booked the train for him, due to the sudden cancellation of the flights. However the train becomes an uncomfortable, restless and frightening space with military on board, sniffer dogs and all. It seems the mere terror-freeing agents themselves spread in discomfort and terror throughout, often jolting the professor back from his romantic musings. He struggles hard to write a mail thanking the p.a, but is hesitant even in finding a suitable addressal. In striking contrast to his soft ballad like romantic sojourns, is the scornful military officer. The family with a small kid trapped in the vestibule, having failed to secure reservation, is a nuisance for him. It seems, a piece of ticket becomes the document for legitimising human identity. Without the ticket you are nowhere, you have no class and hence need to be wiped out. The officer has no remorse to spill off the milk for the baby while the other passengers, too polite and too very conditioned in their social class and mores to reach out to this family. It seems their consciousness of the wrong is not strong enough to make them react, lest they lose their safe and secured social identity. Those trapped in between, belong to nowhere it seems. Hence in absence of a specific identity and geography (they are neither first class passengers, nor second, merely dwindling on the vestibule, connecting the two) However the so-far hesitant professor, for the first time gets rid of his hesitation. Ordering a glass of milk, he slowly reaches out to the family, to feed the baby. One, who was groping hard to traverse the distance of his romantic reminiscences for the beautiful p.a. through the electronic mail, finds it easier to reach out to the family. This distance seemed much shorter for him and easier to act out. The other passengers sigh a breath of relief getting rid of their guilt of inaction.
The second story is my Abbas Kiarastomi and is apparently a difficult one. We find a hoity-toity widow getting onto the train with a young boy. The lady is constantly demanding and dictating. In fact she refuses to accept her second class ticket and somehow manipulates her way to the first class. She is most disapproving of the guy’s individuality and jealous for him spending time with two young girls travelling in the train. She is constantly commanding him, ripping him of his minimal individual will and resistance. Apparently he appears to be the lady’s kept -a tom-boy. But it later transpires that he appears to be on some form of national service, and that she is a widow on the way to a memorial service for her army-general husband. We find De Santi (the widow) angry and fuming and constantly abusing the young man helping her out. And slowly we realize that this train journey is a way for her to clutch closely her losing, slowly eroding social class and prestige. She refuses to be a second class passenger. Her constant bickering and shrewd ways in a way is a process of internal re-inforcement of her social power, which she enjoyed while her husband was alive. This was extremely intelligent for Kiarastomi to fit in this story in the same juxtaposition of the train. In the first segment we find the extreme inertia of the first class passengers (except one) to reach out to the “no-class family boarding the vestibule”. In this segment we find the upper class (only in mind) threatened to get demoted to the lower socio-economic strata (symbolized by the second class), is too painfully active in her efforts of sticking to her “First Class”. We find her helper abandoning her in an explosion of rage and the end of the second segment.
The third segment, my absolute favorite is by Ken Loach. And it highlights on the working class. Somehow it seems that the working class is also the directors chosen favorite, agile enough to react on urges of the soul, rather being trapped in dilemma. His protagonists are fans of Celtic Football Club: three of them, all young men, travelling to Rome for a Champions League match. They've brought a huge bag of sandwiches from their Asda workplace to feed themselves along the way. After one of them gives a sandwich to a young Albanian boy they discover the lad has stolen a train ticket from them. There is then a moral struggle as the Scots talk to the family of the boy (who are refugees and the same family the professor had reached out with milk for the baby) and have to make a quick decision about letting them keep the ticket. Is the family genuinely in need, or are they crooks? Finally, and quickly the heartfelt wisdom of the working man shines through. The Celtic fans make the right call, and the fraternity of football fandom gathered at the station in Rome helps the seemingly fare-dodging trio to evade the police.
It was a light-hearted, yet satisfying ending for the movie. For me, it was almost a journey of revelation of the class consciousness, which is inherent in all of us.
Catch up with the movie, in case you still have not watched it.