When a young pretty Danish girl was broke and stranded in Japan she asked a handsome American seamen in the Port in Yokohama for help, and a couple of bottles of Sake later, she was smuggled aboard his ship that was setting sail for Casablanca. A few days into the voyage they had fallen madly in love, and he was quick to declare to her that he wanted them to have a baby together. Some sixty years later, now an 80 year old woman, she reminisces that it was the only thing in her life that he promised that ever came true.
The rather wonderful but patchy love story of Alfred and Jakobine as retold in this new documentary by filmmakers Jonathan Howells and Tim Roberts really kicks off in 1955 when Alfred stumbles over an old London taxi in Casablanca and decides that the two of them should cross the Sahara Desert in it. After parting with the princely sum of $80 the taxi is theirs and the young couple set off on a trip of a lifetime.
Seven years and several continents later after more than a few brushes with danger and death the couple, complete with Taxi, end up back in Japan and when news of their travels goes public, they become media celebrities there for a while. They then load the taxi back onboard a ship and set sail again, this time across the ocean and back home to the US to finally settle down.
For Jakobine the journey with the man she loved totally fulfilled her every dream, but for Alfred it had just been an awakening to the fact that this had defined him and who he was, and that didn’t entail being a husband. One day after being in their house in Connecticut for a couple of years, he came home from University, took a photograph of Jakobine from his desk and just left home for good. No word and no goodbye. Jakobine recalls now that she was so devastated that she didn’t stop crying for two years.
She did however manage to inveigle Alfred to come back for just night a couple of years later and make him give her the child he had always promised her. She was lucky because it worked, and when her son Neils was born, she felt happy again at last.
Now nearly 50 years later, Alfred aged 84 and living the life of a loner in a shabby decrepit Trailer in New Mexico has a plan. He still has the rusty remains of the old taxi and he wants to get it fixed up once more for a final roadtrip right across the Country to see Jakobine for the last time. He inveigles on Neils, who he has had very little to contact with over the years, to come and help him. Although he has ambiguous feelings about his absent father he agrees to the plan, and to keeping it a secret from his mother.
Jakobine has long since remarried to a younger man called Rusty who has filled her life with joy, but not totally replaced Alfred in her heart.
Some $6000 later the two men set out on their intrepid journey in restored taxi which appears to be in as fragile health as its owner. Both somehow they both make it, and also the days on the road as they motored on slowly, gave father and son their very first chance to bond. When they finally turn up un-announced in the drive way of Jakobine’s house, her reactions are very telling. The appearance of the man she loved so passionately and the car represented all those good and wild times they had together stirred up many memories for her. It seemed also that Alfred’s notion had also paid off as it gave them both a chance to heal and say goodbyes properly. Alfred died some six months later but not before he had trekked a rather exhausting schedule of far flung countries on his own that would take most of us decades to get around to visiting.
Using a whole wealth of home-movie archive footage and combining it with filming both the Taxi’s last journey and current interviews it shows what is undoubtedly a unique and passionate relationship that lasted one way or another over 60 years simply because it was deeper and more profound than most conventional ones. As each of these rather wonderful old people recounted their stories they were as vivid in their minds as if they had just happened yesterday, and both of them had irrepressible twinkles in their eyes as their memories came flooding out. It’s so really hard not to like them or their remarkable story.
Highly recommended
Labels: 2014, biography, canadian, documentary
