A Swiss professor abandons his quiet life to chase a stranger's mysterious past in Lisbon.
In short: When Raimund Gregorius saves a woman from jumping off a bridge in Bern, he is drawn into a labyrinthine journey. Armed only with a rare memoir found in her abandoned coat, he boards a train to Portugal, unraveling the life of a doctor caught in the shadow of the Salazar dictatorship.
The 2013 drama Night Train to Lisbon, directed by Bille August and starring Jeremy Irons, follows Raimund Gregorius, a Swiss philosophy professor whose predictable existence is shattered by a chance encounter. After rescuing a suicidal woman in Bern, he discovers a book by Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese doctor who lived under the oppressive Salazar regime. Driven by curiosity, Raimund travels to Lisbon, where he begins to piece together Amadeu's complex history, including his involvement in the resistance and his complicated relationships with friends like Jorge O'Kelly and the memory-gifted Estefânia.
As Raimund delves deeper, he uncovers the moral dilemmas that defined Amadeu’s life. Most notably, Amadeu famously saved the life of Mendes, a notorious secret police official known as the Butcher of Lisbon, despite his own anti-regime convictions. This act of medical duty caused significant friction within his circle of resistance fighters. Raimund’s investigation eventually reveals that the woman he saved in Bern was actually the granddaughter of this same Butcher, a discovery that had driven her to the brink of despair. Through these revelations, Raimund finds his own sedate life transformed by the weight of history and the choices of those who came before him.
Critical reception of the film was largely unfavorable. Reviewers like David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter and Boyd van Hoeij of Variety criticized the film for its stagnant, page-bound storytelling and lack of narrative tension. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 41% approval rating, while Metacritic reports a score of 30 out of 100. Despite these critiques, the film is noted for its visual beauty and high-profile cast. The story concludes on an ambiguous note, leaving Raimund at a railway station, faced with the choice of returning to his old life in Switzerland or embracing a new beginning in Portugal.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Night Train to Lisbon (film)
- Also: Wikidata — Night Train to Lisbon · CC0
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