The Deserted Station

The newspaper reviewers and the commentators above missed the point, I think. Over and over again, the film develops the contrast between things being motionless and stuck and being energetically in motion. We have the photographer (and photographs render things motionless) in his stuck car. We have the childless wife. This forlorn village. The train that moves and the abandoned and broken train. The teacher is constantly in motion, pushing the photographer on when he wants to wait for a cloud and the perfect picture. And the children are always running here and there, shouting and carrying on. The wife begins to move (despite the clothes that Islam requires and that hamper her movement) when she moves the class to the fields. The ending, with the couple trying to get away in their car and the wife stopping them and the children running after them sums up the situation. Neither this woman whose babies are stillborn nor her rich husband are good at moving the way the teacher and the children are. One can read the film in terms of rich and citified vs. poor and countrified, and that is certainly part of it. But only part.