Review: The Railway Man

Starring: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman & Jeremy Irvine

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky

In a few words...: The based on a true story events of a British POW from World War Two dealing with the scars of that imprisonment before seeking out the Japanese man who tortured him in captivity.
 
Rating: 8/10 

Beware: SPOILERS AHEAD

In watching the haunting and spellbinding The Railway Man on New Year's Eve, I definitely saved the most poignant and important film I've seen all year for last. An underrated actor at the best of times, this was perhaps Colin Firth's greatest and most powerful performance. And, because of the content matter - the building of the Thai-Burma Railway line by an army of Allied prisoners during the Second World War - this is a film that everyone should see - if only to perhaps ensure that nothing like what happened in the jungles during the early years of World War Two never, ever happens again.

Based on the book of the same name, and shot partly in Australia, Eric Lomax (Firth) is a train enthusiast - not a train spotter, mind you - who meets his wife, Patti (Kidman) on a railway service. Unbeknownst to Patti, Lomax has a deep secret. As a young man (ably played by Jeremy Irvine), he was captured during the Fall of Singapore and sent to work on the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway.

After the Japanese discover a radio that the POWs, Lomax chief amongst them, have built in order to keep track of the war, Lomax is brutally tortured by his captors. These scenes, brilliantly shot, were excruciatingly uncomfortable, but laden with realism. I could just about feel every beating that the young man took, but I suppose that's the idea

It was a confronting film from beginning to end, and you can't help but feel for Lomax when he's awoken with nightmares in the early days of his marriage, but can't quite bring himself to tell Patti what's going on. The scars that these POWs must have had to live with for so long - both physical and mental - are unimaginable, I suppose, to anyone who wasn't there.

After the suicide of a friend, Lomax sets out on a confrontation with Japanese officer who tortured him during the war, and eventually has a reunion in the POW camp where he had been a prisoner. Takashi Nagase is working there, in the museum, to alert people to what happened during the war, and the scenes between the two are heart-wrenching, and you can truly feel Lomax's pain. Returning to that ghastly place must have been so difficult.

That the two men managed to become friends after what had happened between them is amazing, but Lomax and Nagase were close for decades, until Nagase's death at age 93. It's a powerful testament to a man's ability to forgive but not forget...and one of the best films made this year.