Looping, chugging and barreling by, the trains in Benning's latest monumental film map a stunning topography and a history of American development. RR comes three decades after Benning and Bette Gordon made The United States of America (1975), a cinematic journey along the country’s interstates that is keenly aware “of superhighways and railroad tracks as American public symbols.” A political essay responding to the economic histories of trains as instruments in a culture of hyper-consumption, RR articulates its concern most explicitly when Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech is heard as a mile long coal train passes through eastern Wyoming. Benning spent two and a half years collecting two hundred and sixteen shots of trains, forty-three of which appear in RR. The locomotives' varying colors, speeds, vectors, and reverberations are charged with visual thrills, romance and a nostalgia heightened by Benning's declaration that this will be his last work in 16mm film.
Directed by James Benning
IMDB
N/A
Letterboxd
4.0 / 5
Crew
James Benning
Director
Popular Reviews
2 reviews
mintbanana
5.0★ · 01/22/26
베닝 최고작 탑쓰리 안에 든다길래 한껏 기대를 했는데 거의 뭔 로스트미디어급으로 찾기가 어려웠고 겨우겨우 찾았더니만 개구린 화질이어서 너무 아쉬웠다 미국의 청명한 하늘 사이로 새빨간 기차가 지나가는 화질이었으면 평점이 유의미하게 바뀌었을 것 같은데 사람들 리뷰에 공감도 하고
베닝 최고작 탑쓰리 안에 든다길래 한껏 기대를 했는데 거의 뭔 로스트미디어급으로 찾기가 어려웠고 겨우겨우 찾았더니만 개구린 화질이어서 너무 아쉬웠다 미국의 청명한 하늘 사이로 새빨간 기차가 지나가는 화질이었으면 평점이 유의미하게 바뀌었을 것 같은데 사람들 리뷰에 공감도 하고