A Journey Worth Taking: “Compartment No. 6”

“Road movies are often about freedom. You can get anywhere with a car, every intersection is a new possibility. However, I think that freedom is not in an infinite number of options, but rather in the ability to accept our limits. A train ride is more like destiny. You can’t decide where to go, you have to accept whatever the journey gives you.”

Juho Kuosmanen

Thus begins the journey that covers most of the film. In the second-class compartment, where we smell the rusty smell of worn irons, we see for the first time Ljoha, a very drunk, uncanny miner whose haircut reinforces his harsh temperament, who will go to Murmansk just like her. “Compartment No. 6” does not open this train journey scene with the feeling of romance and interaction that the audience is accustomed to hearing when we see a man and woman traveling in a train compartment. On the contrary, Ljoha, who is rude and drunk, leaves an uncanny impression on the audience as well as on Laura.

At the very beginning of the movie, at the house party, we also see the tension that Laura experiences while trying to socialize with people who are outside her mother tongue and who she thinks are more culturally savvy than her, on the train journey. This time the roles change, the same thing happens between the intellectual Laura and this rude miner. The language issue reappears from the very first dialogues with Ljoha. Ljoha, who understands that Laura is a foreigner from her good but not fluent Russian, disturbs Laura with various questions, one of which is the Finnish equivalent of “I love you”. In response to this rude man’s rude attitude, Laura answers the question with a curse in her own language. However, this curse will now mean “I love you” in the love that will be born in the continuation of the journey of Laura and Ljoha.

In this respect, I think that “Compartment No. 6” is in contact with the barriers of language and the existence of supra-class feelings in touching someone else’s soul or establishing a romantic relationship. The language barrier appears not only in Laura’s fluent but fluent Russian, but also when Ljoha finds it difficult to express himself. At this point, I remember once again the adage we heard at the beginning of the movie, “Only some parts of us will touch, some parts of others”. Is it necessary to share the same language or use words to be able to touch someone else? Because I feel the moments when Laura touches Ljoha in these travel scenes, in the drawing she drew while Ljoha was asleep, or in the compassionate expression on Laura’s face when the train stopped at a station while Ljoha was playing outside in the snow like a child, watching her when her foot slipped and fell.

When the train journey ends and they arrive in Murmansk, the journey is not complete, and we see the duo on their way to a place outside the city where the petroglyphs are in harsh weather conditions. While no one takes Laura to the area where the petroglyphs are, due to the stormy weather and extreme cold, Ljoha accompanies her here. When they reach the snow-covered and partially frozen islet, we don’t see what’s going on on the thousands of years old stones that Laura wants to see in order to “know their past”; language and its signs are lost here once again. We cannot see what the petroglyphs symbolize.

This love story, born between two strangers, who we feel could not find what they were looking for in life, even though we cannot see their past fully, tells not a love that made butterflies fly in our stomachs from the very beginning, but a love established with compassion and understanding the other. Just as we do not know the backgrounds of the characters, we do not know what Laura sees in the petroglyphs. In my opinion, “Compartment No. 6” tells about the love that will be born between two completely different people, despite all the differences, through a genuine train journey. Sometimes the tongue cracks and splits, and a curse in a completely different language turns into “I love you”.