One Place Only: The Bullet Train (Dir Junya Sato, 2h35m, 1975)
The chamberpiece film is a frequent traveller. Look no further than Locke (2013), set entirely in a car and only featuring Tom Hardy on screen, or the verité Taxi Tehran (2015),set entirely within a taxicab shot without permission and whilst director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films. Speed, (1994) is of course largely set on a bus, but so is the tragicomic Night Bus (2014) and much of Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, in which we settle into the mundane driving job of a would-be poet. Films on planes, boats and especially trains allow variety, and action, space, but confinement. From Korean action movies Snowpiercer (2013) and Train to Busan (2016) and the enjoyably daft Snakes on a Plane (2006) to the uncomfortable claustrophobia of Von Trier's Europa , (1990) and both versions of Murder on the Orient Express (1974/2017) No train, perhaps, has caught its nation's public imagination like the Japa...
