Bilhete lidz Tadzmahalai combines a dream- and nightmare-like mood with a high level of authenticity. Werner Herzog presented the film at the festival in Vienna which he helped to organise and calls it the most beautiful film he has seen in years.The story is situated in Lithuania soon after World War II. Fabijonas lives with his wife on a small farm between two fires. During the day the ‘liberators’, Soviet soldiers, terrorise his home and at night the almost defeated Lithuanian rebels come out of the woods and ask for shelter. The end of the war has changed little for people such as Fabijonas. The oppression by Hitler’s Nazis is followed by that of Stalin’s troops. The results remain the same. The Soviet troops subject the Lithuanians to a regime of terror, Lithuanian leaders and many others are taken away, their books destroyed and their possessions impounded.Fabijonas flees the reality of Lithuania on an imaginary journey. In his dream he wants to go to India to experience the mythical beauty of the Taj Mahal. Evening after evening he bends over a book describing his unreachable destination and repeatedly sees the wonderful temple in a vision before him. Journeys at that time are in reality deportations and the destination is usually Siberia. This extreme contrast is indicated simply yet effectively by a transition from the black & white for Lithuanian gloom to colour for utopian India. The use of Indian music, also in the Lithuanian part, inculcates the whole film with Fabijonas’ desire.
