Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day Movie Review

The color of a brisk and leaping day, it seems, is black and white.

The rather pompously titled Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day tells the story of John Lee, the grandson of a Chinese Immigrant who worked on the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. For some reason, John becomes obsessed with the local, short-line Yosemite Valley Railroad, which is near closure due to abandonment. He manages to buy the railroad and tries (with the aid of minor characters played by Michael Stipe, who would probably have been more helpful playing a rock star instead of a traffic manager, and Henry Gibson). There's a romance, and there's hardship as John runs the railroad... runs it back into the ground, I should say.

Of course, that's just the surface. What Color is really about is, well, I'm not sure what it's about but it's something about anti-Chinese racism and a son's relationship with his father and the past. I didn't really pick up on that racism bit except for in one fleeting scene, but the box says it's in there, so who am I to argue.

Long shots of the scenery, and even longer shots of the trains, rolling rolling rolling along the tracks, manage to lull the audience into deep deep deep sleep. Thus, when you wake up, you won't be sure what you've seen or what it was all about, but it was all so very brisk and leaping that presumably you won't even care.