A Psychoanalytic Train Journey to the Beginning of Beginnings
How do we proceed when we wake up from the bad dream of everyday life into an even bigger nightmare, where everyone becomes a prisoner of the word, in the space of a small train compartment overlooking the landscape, which, however, cycles back in time to the original image of the train station, where the whole story begins?
Arthur Adamov’s absurdist drama is inherently linked to the nihilistic thoughts and dead-end states of neurosis of his own life-tortured soul, which manifests itself directly throughout his sometimes brutal work. As We Were, by the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, explores the suspicious, at times almost toxic dynamics of the relationships of a trio of train passengers whose train perhaps never reaches the final stop of its desired destination in this short but isolation-ridden production.
The minimalist atmosphere of the small train compartment is disrupted by the constantly-changing view from the window, and the initial, almost exaggerated serenity is quickly shattered by the eccentricity of the female characters’ arrival on the scene. Even at first glance there is something off. We see authentic contemporary shots of the landscape with modern trains, but the characters and the general set-up of the train harken back to a time long gone. Are our characters actually living people, or are they – instead – just ghosts stuck in space and time, unable to leave the train’s limbo until they actually find the one they’ve lost on the other side?
The main character, with the Kafkaesque name of A., is on his way to get married when he meets the two strange women, but in their presence his dreams and desires fade away, and the proceedings take on a passive character. The mother searching for her son and the aunt of the missing boy launch an insidious psychological game of reflecting their warped relationships onto his person. A. at once forgets his real intention for the journey and fully gives in to the game of the little boy, unable to break free from the oedipal complex, until this psychoanalytic game of the trio is interrupted by an encounter with the train (or is it reality?).
The end thus becomes the beginning, and what we have been rotates in proportion to what we are yet to be. Sometimes it happens that we fall asleep during the train journey to the registry office and never wake up again. That’s how absurd our neurotic lives can be, too.
