Tickets

Italy, United Kingdom

2005

109 Min

Color

1.85:1

English, Italian

Currently 3.1/5 Stars.
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DIR Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, Ermanno Olmi

PROD Carlo Cresto-Dina, Babak Karimi, Rebecca O'Brien, Domenico Procacci

SCR Abbas Kiarostami, Paul Laverty, Ermanno Olmi

DP Mahmoud Kalari, Chris Menges, Fabio Olmi

CAST Carlo Delle Piane, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Silvana De Santis, Filippo Trojano, Martin Compston, Gary Maitland, William Ruane

ED Babak Karimi, Jonathan Morris, Giovanni Ziberna

A train travels across Italy toward Rome. On board is a professor who daydreams a conversation with a love that never was, a family of Albanian refugees who switch trains and steal a ticket, three brash Scottish soccer fans en route to a match, and a complaining widow traveling to a memorial service for her late husband who’s accompanied by a community-service volunteer who’s assisting her. Interactions among these Europeans turn on class and nationalism, courtesy and rudeness, and opportunities for kindness. —IMDb

Director

Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 30. Since then he has made many movies and has become one of the most important figures in contemporary Iranian film. He is also a major figure in the arts world, and has had numerous gallery exhibitions of his photography, short films and poetry. He is an iconic figure for what he has done, and he has achieved it all by believing in the arts and the creativity of his mind. —World Cinema Foundation

Ken Loach

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer ‘Tony Garnett’ he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating “Cathy Come Home” episode of “The Wednesday Play” (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws. He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with “Kes”, he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) (TV) and Looks and Smiles (1981… read more

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer ‘Tony Garnett’ he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating “Cathy Come Home” episode of “The Wednesday Play” (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws. He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with “Kes”, he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) (TV) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners’ strike). But he made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors – his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects) Hidden Agenda (1990) won the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Riff-Raff (1991) won the Felix award for Best European Film of 1992; Raining Stones (1993) won the Cannes Special Jury Prize for 1993, and ‘Land and Freedom’ won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival -and was a substantial box-office hit in Spain where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. This needless to say, was one of the reasons that Loach made the film! —IMDb

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Ermanno Olmi

The death of his father during the Second World War led Ermanno Olmi to seek work at an early age. From the age of 18, he worked as a factory clerk, a position he would occupy for nearly ten years. Ironically, factory life would also enable Olmi to discover his true vocation when he became involved in industrial film production for the Edison-Volta company. From 1953 to 1961, Olmi was involved in the making of at least forty documentary shorts. His first feature Time Stood Still was initially commissioned as a short documentary on a hydroelectric dam built in the Italian Alps. The resulting film was an unusual two-character “chamber piece”; the chamber being a cabin in the snow-bound Alps which housed a middle-aged watchman and a younger man who joins him as a temporary replacement.
Already visible is Olmi’s detailed minimalism, a style which evokes the richness of the small forgotten moments of everyday life. His first international success, and most influential film, was his second… read more

The death of his father during the Second World War led Ermanno Olmi to seek work at an early age. From the age of 18, he worked as a factory clerk, a position he would occupy for nearly ten years. Ironically, factory life would also enable Olmi to discover his true vocation when he became involved in industrial film production for the Edison-Volta company. From 1953 to 1961, Olmi was involved in the making of at least forty documentary shorts. His first feature Time Stood Still was initially commissioned as a short documentary on a hydroelectric dam built in the Italian Alps. The resulting film was an unusual two-character “chamber piece”; the chamber being a cabin in the snow-bound Alps which housed a middle-aged watchman and a younger man who joins him as a temporary replacement.
Already visible is Olmi’s detailed minimalism, a style which evokes the richness of the small forgotten moments of everyday life. His first international success, and most influential film, was his second feature. Il Posto was inspired in part by Olmi’s experience as a factory clerk, but the action was updated to contemporary Milan in the wake of Italy’s storied economic miracle. Olmi depicted the alienated nature of the modern workplace. His protagonist Domenico (Sandro Panseri) discovers the extent to which his personal life is determined by the framework of his dead-end job. The film received a prize at the Venice Film Festival and would become a defining influence on film-makers Abbas Kiarostami and Martin Scorsese.

Olmi’s succeeding film I Fidanzati (The Fiancés’) was a striking departure from his previous works. The film’s intricate flashback structure alternates the present of a factory worker’s period of adjustment in Sicily with memories of his relationship with his fiancée back home in Milan. Recognized as a masterpiece by Roberto Rossellini, I Fidanzati won the Ecumenical prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This early summit was followed by a period of inconsistency as Olmi alternated short documentaries with films funded by RAI, the national television company. The strongest works from this period includes Un certo giorno, The Scavengers and The Circumstance.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs, made in 1978, would return him to the international spotlight. Inspired by childhood stories told by his grandparents, the film was an epic portrait of 19th Century life in his native Lombardy. It received the Palme d’Or and is regarded as Olmi’s masterpiece. Ill-health temporarily halted the director’s output (which nonetheless remains active as of the present moment). The period which followed marked a turn to religious subjects. The Legend of the Holy Drinker, an adaptation of a novel by Joseph Roth, and Genesis: The Creation and The Flood are regarded among his best works by critic Kent Jones. Among his more recent works is Tickets, a 2005 omnibus featuring shorts by Abbas Kiarostami and Ken Loach in addition to Ermanno Olmi’s contribution. His upcoming film The Cardboard Village will re-unite him with Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, who starred in The Legend of the Holy Drinker. —Mr Bongo

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