Heartwarming film about a bus-driver on a mission

Spanish box office hit The 47 will have you cheering for a bus driver who wants to save a route for a disadvantaged community.

The man behind the wheel is Manolo Vital ( a superb Eduard Fernandez), who has been a bus driver for 20 years.

The 47 (M)
110 minutes
In Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles
In cinemas as part of the Spanish Film Festival

★★★★

The Spanish historical drama The 47 is a terrific film about how, to paraphrase Jamaican musician Bob Marley, a small axe can bring down a big tree.

The main setting is Barcelona in 1978 and the axe is the No.47 passenger bus. The one swinging it is the man behind the wheel, Manolo Vital (a superb Eduard Fernandez), who has been a bus driver for 20 years.

The tree is the Barcelona bureaucracy which has no interest in allowing a bus route to the Torre Baro neighbourhood on the hilly outskirts of the city, home to migrant communities.

It is Vital’s hometown, one he and other immigrants built with their own hands. Flashbacks to 1958 show the struggle to build the shanty town, and Vital meeting a nun, Sister Carmen (Clara Segura), who would become his wife. “I was the leftist who married a nun,’’ he notes in 1978.

This film, directed and co-written by Marcel Barrena, is full of beautiful human moments, such as the first time we see Vital driving his route. He knows all the regular passengers and they know him. They tease each other, as friends do.

It also has tragic moments, as when there is a house fire in Torre Baro, and humour, such as a policeman’s unzipped zipper and an exploration of the nuances between the Spanish and Catalan languages.

Vital has a cause but he’s a reluctant rebel. He plays by the rules and patiently goes through the bureaucratic process. When he tells a senior bureaucrat that the people in Torre Baro need a bus route, the reply is, “I want dinner with Cher. That’s life.”

Soon afterwards, Vital tells his wife, “I’m going to blow it all up.” He decides to take action. If you know his real life story, you’ll know what he does. Let’s just say it involves the bus and it’s a wonderful ride.

One of the key messages of this film, which topped the box office in Spain, is that dignity is not something abstract. For the people of Torre Baro, and their counterparts in impoverished communities around the world, it is water, electricity, a roof over their heads, paved roads and, in this case, a bus.