Perhaps because they both starred comedians, Life Is Beautiful and Jakob The Liar were dubiously dubbed "Holocaust comedies." The term is more than a little inaccurate, because despite occasional moments of carefully tempered humor, both portrayed prison camps with solemnity and horror: Few could construe Roberto Benigni stumbling across a towering pile of lifeless bodies as funny. Radu Mihaileanu's Train Of Life, on the other hand, is occasionally funny but more often just silly. A truly fable-like tale of a small Jewish town trying to escape the clutches of the Nazis, it has a lot in common with Isaac Beshivis Singer's classic stories, including the presence of troublemakers, bickering wise men, and naïve problem solvers. In Train Of Life, the village elders—inspired by an idea conceived by wise-beyond-his-reputation village idiot Lionel Abelanski—decide to build their own deportation train, one that could pass inconspicuously beneath the Nazis' noses until it reaches safety. It's an impossible solution, a fact the movie doesn't fail to overlook, and the mood shifts perilously from one of manic, slapstick comedy to one of obnoxiously manic, slapstick comedy. Yet there appears to be a method to the madness: Unlike Life Is Beautiful and Jakob The Liar, Mihaileanu's film is explicitly a fantasy, and as such exists in a fantastical world. Devised without one death scene and beautifully shot by Theo Angelopoulos' cinematographer Yorgos Arvanitis, Train Of Life is closer in spirit and execution to Fiddler On The Roof than Schindler's List, treading the same absurdist line as many of Emir Kusturica's films. (Coincidentally, frequent Kusturica collaborator Goran Bregovic scored Train Of Life.) If the film ultimately fails, it's in part due to its many successes: Most will be unprepared to see such a dire situation approached so casually, though the film's humor could in some ways be considered intrinsically Jewish (or European, with its references to Communism and gypsies). By the time Train Of Life reaches its enigmatic and perhaps surprising conclusion, viewers may have already made up their mind as to its merits. The truth hurts, but it can be made more painful when preceded by such painlessness.