Homeward Bound

Holiday travel conjures up a level of dedication in people that few situations do. For example, last Christmas Eve I left Dallas at 10 a.m. and arrived at my destination 140 miles away nearly 30 hours later, after spending a night on an icy rural highway with the cheerful members of the Bellevue Volunteer Fire Department. I headed into a record-breaking blizzard that day because being with my family is one of the most important things in the world to me. It's that same motivation that drives people into massive lines at airports, allows them to overlook full-body scans and lets us move past the bitchy attitudes that most airlines try to pass off as customer service. We take the delays and the unpredictable weather because it's a means to an end. And that ending is oh-so-sweet for so many of us. Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan explores the drive in us all to return home to our families in Last Train Home, about the 130 million Chinese workers who migrate home every year for New Year's celebrations. Traveling by foot, boat and train, the homeward bound face travails that make a TSA "pat-down" look like happy hour. The haunting documentary plays at the Modern Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Friday at 6 and 8 p.m.; Saturday at 5 p.m. and Sunday at noon, 2 and 4 p.m. Tickets are $8.50 or $6.50 for Modern members. Visit themodern.org/magnolia.
Dec. 10-12, 2010