i dont understand

You weren't the only one left scratching their head. I thought the look of the film was most impressive, but the "story" lurked somewhere between incoherent and meaningless.

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I don't actually know, either, 1st off. I thought that some of the things were real, and some were her fears/imagination. Which is the nature of perception, isn't it? I though the butterfly, which I thought of as a moth, represented the light, and innocence, and the way out of the nightmare and her fears. And she lost all of her "baggage" in the end. Just my feelings - like most things like this it's supposed to make different people see different things, I guess.

I found the plot easy to understand. I didn't really read into the description of the movie because they made it sound more complicated than it needed to be, especially the part about "caught between reality and imagination". This is my interpretation of it at least. WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!! Don't read any further unless you want to know the entire story!

A woman boards a train with a ton of baggage, both literally and symbolically. She's extremely timid and meek. Sometime during the night the train stalls and some robbers get on board. They gas the passengers with carbon monoxide which kills them, and then steals the organs of at least one passenger, possibly all of them. (Maybe to sell on the black market? Who knows.) Madame Tutli-Putli awakes on the train alone. She's now dead and in the after life. She's confused and scared because her spirit is still on the train and she hasn't "crossed over". She runs frantically around, then trips and falls in the dining room. She notices a moth that she saw earlier, and suddenly she's not afraid. The moth brings her comfort and peace and she stands up confidently. She's now drifting fast towards a bright light, and the moth reveals itself to be an angel.

I thought the ending was very beautiful, especially the music. I'm sure there are many ways to interpret what happened, but to me it was a story about death and crossing over. As for the part where they show the train at dawn, it could mean a few things. Maybe the directors did it for style, or to hint that it was a dream, or maybe it happened for real and the conductor is in for an awful surprise.

I watched this in my film class and what I came up with was that she was dying or in limbo/purgatory and her soul was actually the one travelling, not her actual/physical self.

The opening shot of all her possessions is everything she's owned in her lifetime that she is now dragginh along with her aboard the train.

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I didn't understand it either, and after looking a bit deeper into the matter (since the movie is beautiful and intriguing), I have come to the conclusion that there is no clear idea that the movie makers were trying to convey to us. After watching the movie twice and reading some other interpretations, and some interviews with the movie makers, I think that they want to say something about the wildness of the modern civilisation, about its ability to destroy shy and artless things, but also something about the ability of the natural world to disrupt the clean and over-civilized world (there seems to be a bi-dimensional intention to the moth-caught-in-the-lamp image, first - that the moth got, well, caught, and second, that the train lamp will never be immaculate again after this).

But these two ideas don't seem to form a whole, and also they definitely don't explain many other things that happen in the movie; additionally, the creators seemed to be particularly keen on creating a mystery and particularly displeased with the general idea of solving a mystery, so, like I said, I don't think that there is an intended coherent solution to all that. If some the viewers manage to find such a solution, then fine, but it will be their answer alone. I think that the movie makers just took many things they liked (images, sounds, songs, people they knew, people the heard about, faces, brief nods to other movies etc.), made them fit together and planted them all here, without actually planning to transmit something to the viewer - letting him or her pick whatever they like from all that.

Personally, I dislike this thing, I care a lot about art as a means of communication, I like mysteries which do promise solutions, besides I definitely dislike moths . But otherwise, the thing did captivate my attention long enough to deserve a rating of at least 7, besides the visuals are indeed as astounding as they may seem. Plus, this is *my* reaction to a dead-end mystery, other people may well enjoy this more than I do. And finally, I did catch at least a few references to other movies, whether intended or not I don't know, but they are nicely introduced in the movie: the initial panning over Tutli's luggage looks a bit like one of the final scenes from Citizen Kane (where the camera pans over his belongings, after his death), Tutli's whole appearance reminded me a bit of Fellini's Cabiria, and the whole story did reek a bit of Dead Man (character leaving everything behind and taking a train to a far away place, strange things happening in the train and afterwards, suspicion that the character may have spent a good part of the movie in the after-life, poetical / eerie atmosphere, baffled character with huge eyes...). But again, I believe these (otherwise nice nods / coincidences) are just nice things put together, and don't really stand for some *intended* hidden meaning.

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It reminded me quite a bit of "Bunny" (1998) http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0179011/ although I think Bunny was much better at getting it's message across.

Bunny was on the Ice Age DVDs, but I don't know if it's on the latest version of the DVD. Bunny was an Oscar winner.

The first few times I watched this I had to agree with a lot of the complaints that are on this board... interesting, incredibly animated but, ultimately, incoherent and meaningless. But I kept finding myself watching it again and again fascinated by the piece and not just its spectacular animation.

After half a dozen viewings, I want to say that I find this nether incoherent nor meaningless and I also feel that it has NOTHING to do with materialism. But I do have to admit that there is not enough information provided by the director to say definitively that anything I believe is any less valid than any of your beliefs. It is all pure interpretation.

To give my own interpretation:

The entire piece is a metaphor about emotional baggage and how we let ourselves become crushed under our past.

The artists are very descriptive in the images they shows us and, given the five years of time it took to animate, I also believe that almost every detail has been crafted to tell this story.

Starting at the very beginning, a long LONG line of crap that is set out behind Madame Tutli-Putli and the camera presents this information to the extreme laughable level. But notice that it’s not clustered around her as she or a porter would have arraigned it, it follows her in a straight line like a row of little ducks and its quantity is so large as to be ridiculous; a volume so great that she could never have carried it and would never be traveling with it all. Furthermore, the first time we see Madame TP with her stuff, her head and back are bowed under the weight of what she is carrying. This is not a woman who is moving all her early belongings, this is a woman beaten down by all of her emotional baggage.

For direct symbolism, the moth seems clear to me. The moth is a metaphor for change (caterpillar to moth) and of enlightenment (always flying towards the light). The first time we see the moth, it flies around her at the station and she swings at it, driving it off. The second time is on the train as she tries to write her letter (having a hard time even figuring out who to even write too) and this time she watches it flutter around the light (this is when the "Thieves" arrive). The last time is when she follows it into the light once her baggage is gone and she has run through the train in a panic. Notice that in its first appearance, the moth is trying to catch her attention, the second time it does catch her attention but fear draws her away from it and, on the third appearance, her attention becomes focused on the moth and she follows it ignoring all else.

The people on the train are not people but all part of her "baggage." This is completely obvious with the two men playing chess (they "live" in her suitcases and play their game in an area that should be too cramped). Their game is utterly meaningless (victory and defeat given to chance) and yet they gloat on their success/failure. She watches their game but then looks away in (disappointment, disinterest, your guess is as good as mine), but it isn't a fond memory.

The man across from his is a real piece of work...the tennis racquet and champagne bottle plus the memory of him playing tennis show her memories of him. His crude and sexually explicit gestures show you exactly what kind of mistake he was in her life. Her reaction to him is veiled fury and an attempt to ignore him.

The old man sleeping and a child who dislikes her we can chalk up to yet another set of memories that are both dislikable and/or disappointing (A father who slept more than paid her attention? A child who was an old ruined friendship or just a child that never materialized in her life? Who knows?)

The train I see as symbolizing life. At the beginning it is moving too fast and doesn't stop to let her on. Once she has finally managed to get on it, she is packed into a small room with all her baggage. In the night, it is stopped...her life isn't going anywhere and she looks about bored. But, once she sees the moth, that is when the men come to steal her baggage (she has seen change but fears loosing what she knows). At that moment, the train takes off at an out of control pace. When she awakens and the baggage is gone, she flees the room moving forward with no real direct but then, when the moth reappears, is the first time she can really focus on following it.

In the chase after the moth, she loses her hat which, if you really think about it, is the garment that really makes her look mousy and timid. Moving forward into the light, she becomes one with the moth and leaves behind her baggage.

I'm sure that anyone out there can come up with a dozen other interpretations to this and I can't argue that you would be wrong in the least. I also can't really tie the presence of the men on the train to any direct symbolism with the possible exception that the robber who leans into her line of vision, has the face of a skull...perhaps it was death that took her crass lover away by killing his liver (too much drinking???).

I know that this thread is very old and I'm just putting my two cents in years too late, but if anyone has any better ideas, please tack them on.




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