Review // The Railway Man

Jonathon Teplitzky’s The Railway Man wants so much to be important, that it becomes four movies packed in to one.  The part romance/part war drama is held together with strong performances and an intriguing story, but struggles to stay on track as it jumps through time from present day to 1940s Thailand.

The Railway Man begins with Eric Lomax (a dowdy-but-charming Colin Firth) meeting the beautiful Patti (Nicole Kidman) on a train.  Charmed by Lomax’s knowledge of train schedules, Patti quickly falls for him and before long they are moving in to a beachside townhouse together.  However unbeknownst to Patti, Lomax harbours a dark past.  As a soldier in World War II he was imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp and forced to work on the construction of the Burma rail line. Despite his outward appearance, Lomax is far from over his terrible ordeal, and the returning memories threaten to destroy the quiet life Patti had imagined for them.

It feels unseemly to criticize a film about such a sensitive topic, and yet if it were not for the fact that the film is based on true story, I think it would be shrugged off as Hollywood melodrama.  The fast paced opening is confused by a quick compression of time and a  lack of chemistry between the lead actors.  The opening scenes have you thinking that this will be a romance with some railway themes.  Instead, the viewer is quickly thrown through flashback into a World War II drama.

After the fall of Singapore in 1941 Lomax and his fellow British officers are taken prisoner by the Japanese.  These early scenes in the POW camp are tense and unnerving.  The resourceful British are quickly making a radio in secret out of parts grabbed by Lomax before their imprisonment.  Lomax is also drawing a map of the rail lines, hiding it from his captors in the drainpipe of a bamboo urinal.  These escapades harken back to similar classic films in which the indomitable British spirit allows them to overcome their captors (Bridge on the River Kwai comes to mind), but that trope is startlingly extinguished as the map is discovered and the focus shifts to Lomax’s harrowing torture at the hands of the Japanese officer Nagase (Tanroh Ishida).

The film’s second half centres on the mystery surrounding Lomax’s torture at the hands of the Japanese secret police.  As the present-day Lomax sinks deeper into these memories, Patti attempts to help.  She speaks with Lomax’s friend Finley (Stellan Skarsgard) at the veteran’s club, but he gives the all-too-common answer: “these are things that a man must deal with alone.” The film begins to hit its stride as Patti pursues this question (though never going so far as to ask her husband), and for a while it seems like it will play out as a mystery, with facts slowly parsed out through flashbacks as Patti investigates.  However suddenly things take another turn. Nagase is still alive and acting as a tour-guide at the very same compound in which Lomax was held all those years ago!

Packing a knife, the present-day Lomax heads back to Thailand with the plan to murder the man who ruined his life.  When he gets there however, he is confronted by the idea that the horrors of war affect both sides.  As if to show us exactly what those horrors are, the mystery is solved and we’re treated to a collection of overlong torture flashbacks.  These scenes are no doubt shockingly described in Lomax’s novel on which the film is based.  A novel can get into the head of a character and explore the thoughts of a man pushed to his physical and mental limit by brutal persecution.  Film requires a bit of a different touch, and director Jonathon Teplitzky seems to have been unsure how to adapt the scenes to the screen.  Maybe there is something commendable in forcing viewers to watch multiple scenes of brutal torture, but it comes across as garish and inelegant.

The film redeems itself slightly at the end, with a powerful message about forgiveness.  It’s nice, but it’s the fourth odd turn in what amounts to a logically and emotionally confusing experience.  Colin Firth is a strong presence as the older Lomax, and Jeremy Irvine is suitably committed as the solder’s younger incarnation.  However Nicole Kidman is given little to do but fret as Lomax’s wife, and Stellan Skarsgard exits the film in a manner that seems more silly than shocking.  Maybe it’s an issue with telling a story in flashbacks while also drastically compressing time in the “present day”, but The Railway Man feels more like it was thought up by a group of Hollywood execs than based on real life events.

Despite its flaws The Railway Man spotlights a rarely examined element of the second World War.  The horrors of war did not end in 1945, they returned home with the thousands of soldiers who were expected to get on with life as usual now that the fighting had stopped.  It’s weighty, important subject matter, and the film seems to sag beneath this understanding.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.

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