Trains

Trains opens with a quote from Franz Kafka: “There is plenty of hope. An infinite amount of hope. But not for us.” These words hang like a dark cloud over this found footage documentary, which creates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies.

Powerful scenes showing steam locomotives and railroad cars being assembled feel like a celebration of human ingenuity and labor. People dressed in festive attire embark on a rail journey. But these cheerful scenes soon make way for military transport: soldiers being deployed to the frontlines—quickly followed by civilians evacuating, a procession of ragged prisoners-of-war, and amputee soldiers.

Times change, the pattern repeats. The archival material in this wordless film evokes an inevitable cycle of delight and destruction, beauty and bitterness. The image of a tangle of railroad tracks and switches raises the inevitable question: Which route will humanity choose?