Ben Apfelbaum

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

Justin Theroux as Tom and Emily Blunt as Rachel.Pic by Barry Wetcher.

This film  is the Spring season  blockbuster topping box office receipts in both Australia and the States. This is odd because it contains no super hero nor vulgar teens. In fact, it has a positively indie feel to it. It is very Hitchcockian where a woman Rachel (Emily Blunt) from a train window to and from Manhattan believes that she is witnessing a perfect love story of a woman Megan (Hayley Bennett) who lives a few doors up from  where Rachel used to live with her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) who is now remarried with a baby. Rachel then  sees on a subsequent train trip what appears to be a betrayal by this lady with a man other than her husband. Rachel is a chronic alcoholic who frequently passes out. Megan’s infidelity so unhinges Rachel that she  gets off at Megan’s station, and confronts her in a train tunnel. The next day Megan is missing and a little later is found murdered.

So here one can find elements of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Rear Window, Spellbound  and even other more recent films such as The Bourne Identity. However, the director Tate Taylor does not have Hitchcock’s light touch and humour. There  is also a nice  Friends reference with Lisa Kudrow in a small but pivotal role, whilst Justin Theroux is Jennifer Aniston’s real life husband.

This film revolves around Rachel attempting to piece together her blackout. She suspects she may have murdered Megan as does a Detective Riley (Allison Janney). To say any more would spoil the playing out of this psychological thriller.

Emily Blunt plays Rachel as a haggard, blood-shot eyed foolish woman whose life has disintegrated. The film’s colours are washed out and pallid as if we are viewing the scenes through the bottom of an empty beer glass. When the viewpoint comes from other characters the colour palette becomes a little brighter.

Emily Blunt almost chews the scenery but the vulnerability in those big blue bloodshot eyes radiate a fragility that keeps her on the right side of ‘ham’.

Tate Taylor, as if to emphasise the indi-artiness of this film has for me, too many tight close-ups of Emily Blunt’s pale and pliable face. Martin Scorsese did it in The Departed,  wasting about twenty minutes too many, doing a reprise of the teeth-gnashing gruesomeness in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining I (Yes I know the film won 4 Oscars including Best Director). Director Tom Hooper did the same thing in Les Miserables spending excess footage on the handsome and expressive visages of Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, and Eddie Redmayne.

This film takes a while to get going with moments of longueur when I felt my eyelids begin to0 droop. Unlike  Rachel, I did not blackout. The Girl On The Train then becomes entertainingly suspenseful, with the twist revealed earlier than usual so that an epilogue of action can occur. The movie has a strong cast in addition to those I have mentioned including Rebecca Ferguson as Anna, Tom’s new wife, Luke Evans as Scott, Megan’s husband, Edgar Ramirez as Dr Kamal Andic who all create adeptly and cleverly enough red herrings to keep you guessing.

It is a mildly entertaining film  Emily Blunt may get an Oscar nomination for it, but I can’t understand the movies’ blockbuster success.

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.