Maciej J. Drygas wasn’t necessarily looking for footage of major events to show a cultural transformation in “Trains,” having instead to dig through archives where he and his filmmaking team would keep an eye out for the most mundane of activities that any filmmakers around at the turn of the 20th century thought it was worth to train their camera on, understanding that when the very material of celluloid itself was at a premium, there had to be value in it. One of the most captivating sequences in the film involves people standing around the cabin of a train from various sources, finding ways to entertain themselves whether it was unfolding their crisply printed newspapers or imagining the long corridor as a catwalk to show off their fashion sense.
There are many things that are unspoken in “Trains” when it unfolds as any other film of the silent era would without dialogue (though a dynamic score from Pawel Szymanski that can often make music out of the industrial sounds that emanate from a locomotive give the film constant propulsion). But the transcendent doc doesn’t need the words to make powerful connections, including the fact that Drygas ends up tracking the maturation of two inventions that could unite the world and also had the potential to split it apart, depending on its use as he mined archives around the world for footage of trains. When the possibilities of the new form of transportation seemed endless, they were a natural subject for filmmakers futzing around with the earliest cameras who were eager to capture wonders that weren’t immediately a part of everyday life. But during a time that now feels more distant than any geographic location, the ordinary becomes the most fascinating part of the film or at least what is made to feel that way as people become more accepting of a new technology and incorporate it into their lives less concerned with its consequences.
In “Trains,” the capabilities of mass transit are seen as a revolution that can allow passengers to travel further than they ever have before and remain connected through mail that suddenly arrives much faster than it had by Pony Express, but also something to be wary of as Hitler comes to power in Germany and the compartments are used for weapons and worse. The remarkable capabilities of the new machines are only as good as the people using them and as Drygas illustrates in riveting detail how pedestrian use of them would reshape society, the film not only preserves and puts into context a key moment in history but sparks consideration for the technology we use today. Upon its premiere last year at IDFA, “Trains” won prizes for both best documentary feature and best editing and now is gaining steam as an awards contender elsewhere as it was recently nominated for best archival documentary and best score at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards and as Drygas has criss-crossed the U.S. this past month, the director graciously spared a few moments via e-mail to share how he put together the marvelous film and like his subject, cut across borders once perceived as being impossible to overcome.
I’ve heard that this film began with the idea that “a train journey is a metaphor for life,” and of course, I know the medium of film itself began with the Lumiere brothers’ “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station,” but how did the idea take shape as far as what the scope would be and concentrating on this particular time in history?
Indeed, the very first note in my notebook from over a decade ago began with the sentence: “A train journey is a metaphor for life.” But the impulse to create this film was not a single moment of revelation. It was rather a process of maturation, an idea that crystallized over the years at the intersection of personal experience, observation of the world, and reflection on history.
In the twentieth century, the train became both a witness to and an instrument of history — from the euphoria of progress and the joy of traveling in luxurious carriages, to the transports bound for war fronts and concentration camps. The same machine that was meant to connect people also served to destroy them. It is precisely this ambivalence — between progress and catastrophe — that became the key to telling a story without words, through images and sound. The choice of the historical period was natural: the twentieth century was the time when the railway was the backbone of civilization, and at the same time its dark reflection.
Working with what was available to you as far as footage, were there certain themes or ideas of a story you had in mind to build around or would you make connections in the footage that allowed you to build a narrative? I’ve read you approached the edit differently than previous films.
At first, this film was meant to look completely different. It was supposed to be filled with words. For nearly a year and a half, I explored archives all over the world in search of texts written on trains — fragments of letters, diaries, official notes. They were records of moments, thoughts, emotions written on the move, in the rhythm of the railway. From this material, a screenplay of more than thirty pages emerged. When I began editing the film together with editor Rafał Listopad, and the first sequences started to take shape, we realized that our film could exist without verbal narration — that words weakened the power of the visual message. The images were expressive and emotionally resonant enough on their own. That was when I decided to abandon the text entirely. It was a difficult choice — to rely solely on the dramaturgy of image. I felt it was an experiment, but a necessary one.
The editing process was like a journey through time — hundreds of hours spent watching and analyzing footage from 98 archives around the world. It was a work with memory, with silence, with rhythm. In my previous films, I often radically deconstructed the original meaning of archival materials, giving them a completely new sense. In “Trains,” these new meanings often emerged in the spaces between sequences. From archival footage — often fragmented and ambiguous — I constructed an entirely new world. It was a process somewhat akin to making a fiction film, an act of creation. I do not treat the archive as a purely historical record. For me, it is a raw material that I transform into a new, cinematic reality.
I suspect that sound might not have been available along with the footage you compiled. What was it like to build the soundscape for this film, both perhaps for individual scenes and as a connective element for the footage?
It is true that some of the oldest archival materials were silent. Yet for me, sound is the breath of a film. The soundscape was as important as the image. I understood that in the absence of text, I would have to create an extremely precise sound design. Finding an original key to constructing this complex sonic layer, and establishing the right balance between image and sound, became one of the greatest challenges.
I worked with composer Paweł Szymański, whose music brings a metaphysical dimension to the film, and with Saulius Urbanavičius, a Lithuanian master of sound design. Together we realized that we did not want mere illustration. Our focus was not on the obvious sounds of trains in motion, but on their inner life. In this film, locomotives are born in pain, in wailing and in tears. When bombed, they fall ill, they howl, they disintegrate. Saulius created sonic textures that drift apart, pulse, and breathe. I wanted the viewer not to remain a distant observer, but to be drawn inside the carriage — to be immersed, to travel inward. To experience, on a visceral level, the shifting world outside as the journey unfolds through time. And perhaps, for a moment, to let that journey awaken reflection — or a question: Where am I in this world? And why? … Along which tracks will my life continue to move?
Was there any piece of footage that was revelatory to you or change your ideas about what this could be? Or perhaps that you knew was out there in the archives, but it was difficult to get a hold of?
Most of the sequences in the film take place on trains or around them. However, there are also several crucial episodes that are not directly connected with the railway. For example, the sequence showing the production of artillery shells, which moments later are being loaded into train wagons. Deciding how to integrate such scenes into the film, while maintaining the feeling that we are constantly in motion, was not easy. I also remember that a particular kind of investigation was required to find archival footage showing soldiers after the First World War, whose shattered faces were being reconstructed. Eventually, we found that material in the American National Library of Medicine archives.
Was there a particular sequence that was a challenge to get right, whether in the rhythm or the logic of it when all you had was the footage to make it work?
The editing process lasted over a year, and when we finally watched the completed film on screen — when it seemed that our work was finished — I began to doubt the strength of the final sequences. I felt that we were multiplying scenes of wagons and stations, that we were not rising to a metaphorical level, not opening a space for interpretation. In the end, we returned to the editing room and created more than thirty different versions of the film’s last minutes.
The rise of Nazi Germany is inevitably part of this and I know much of your work has touched on government oppression. Given the what’s going on today in the world, were you influenced at all by current events in what you wanted to show?
The contemporary image of the world — in my view, a rather bleak one — was one of the main impulses that drove me to make this film. From the very beginning, I knew that its dramaturgy would be built on recurring refrains: the time of war, followed by relief, joy, and hope that it would never happen again. But history — not only that of the 20th century — holds a paradox, perhaps even a curse: we do not learn from our own mistakes. In my film, I focused on two wars, yet it would not be difficult to extend these sequences, drawing from the archives, all the way to the present day. In the finale, we see twisted, endlessly curving tracks, a metaphor for a road whose direction is uncertain. I believe that every viewer must answer for themselves where we are heading. And yet, I still believe that within this labyrinth of history, there remains a place for light — and perhaps that is the true meaning of this journey.
“Trains” will next screen at the Polish Film Festival in America in Chicago at the Gallery Theatre on November 16th at 3 pm. A full list of theaters and dates is here.