Albert Maysles’s final film takes viewers on a journey across the heart and soul of America
IN TRANSIT (Albert Maysles, Lynn True, Nelson Walker, David Usui, and Ben Wu, 2015)
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd., between 127th & 128th Sts., 212-537-6843
Opens Friday, June 23
www.maysles.org
“There’s something about a train that’s magic,” Richie Havens sang in a series of 1980s Amtrak commercials. Master documentarian Albert Maysles goes in search of that magic in his final film, In Transit. In 2014-15, Maysles, who passed away in 2015 at the age of eighty-eight, and his team took several trips on Amtrak’s Empire Builder, described as “America’s busiest long-distance train route,” which carries passengers between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest over the course of three days, following much of the route that explorers Lewis and Clark mapped out in the early nineteenth century. Maysles, Nelson Walker, David Usui, and Ben Wu focus handheld cameras on men, women, and children of all ages and ethnicities as they talk with other passengers about transitions they’re going through. One pregnant woman is past her due date, hoping she makes it to Minnesota to give birth with members of her family. She makes friends with a man who is photographing everywhere they go. A young man has suddenly quit his job to try to make a new life with his high school sweetheart in Indiana. A Native American talks about how he is riding the train to think about his relationship with his partner, which is on the ropes. An abused woman is returning from seeing her daughter for the first time in nearly half a century. Sometimes they’re speaking directly with Maysles, and other times the filmmakers are like flies on the wall, picking up snippets of conversations as the passengers share their hopes and dreams, along with their struggles and fears, in true cinéma vérité fashion. Everyone is open and free, including the conductors. “This is the only job I’ve ever wanted,” one of the trainmen explains.
Early on, a young woman says, “My friend CJ is always like, ‘How do you do it? How do you go to these places? How do you do these things? How do you just pack up and go? Aren’t you scared?’ Like, yeah, of course you’re scared. And it’s like at the same time you know what’s scarier? Staying exactly where you were, doing exactly what you always have done.” To which a young man adds, “Sometimes you just gotta do it. You know, what have you really to lose?” The Empire Builder has a viewing carriage, a car with a row of comfortable seats that face the window, offering passengers beautiful views of an America that not everyone sees, an America in which they are trying to start anew. It’s a calm, slow-moving film that doesn’t identify anyone by name, seventy-six minutes that share a narrow but candid look at who we are, and where we’re going. “I don’t really want to get off the train,” a single mother of four admits. It might not be one of Maysles’s best — his legacy consists of such seminal works as Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, and What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., made with his brother, David — but In Transit is a fitting end to his journey. “I wanted to make a film about trains, but really about the unity of humankind,” he said shortly before his death. In Transit opens June 23 at Metrograph on the Lower East Side and the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem; the 7:00 Metrograph screening on June 23 will be introduced by True and will be followed by a Q&A with True, Usui, and casting director Martha Wollner, while MDC will host Q&As with True and supervising producer Erika Dilday at the 7:00 show on June 24, with True at the 5:00 show on June 25 and the 7:30 show on June 27, and with True and Walker at the 7:30 show on June 29, with more to be announced.