Film review - The Railway Man

Based on the autobiography by Eric Lomax, The Railway Man is the story of the former Royal Signals officer who was forced to work on Burma’s infamous ‘death railway’ following his capture in the fall of Singapore in 1942.

The ‘death railway’ was constructed when Burma and Thailand were occupied by the Japanese and this piece of impossible engineering was finally built by slave labour; 60,000 Allied prisoners of war, of which over 12,000 died as a direct result of the project.  For those few who survived, their incarceration was an unspeakable horror causing pain and trauma that would last a lifetime.

Lomax was subjected to horrific abuse and torture after owning up to secretly having built a radio at his camp but decades later travelled back to the far east to track down his former torturer, Takashi Nagase, with whom he was reconciled. The friendship of these two men became a moving emblem of peace and forgiveness.

Teplitzky's drama starts in the 1980s with Lomax (Colin Firth) meeting the newly-divorced Patti (Nicole Kidman).  But soon after their honeymoon, Lomax's post-traumatic stress becomes unbearable and the marriage endangered by his temper and worsening depression.

Patti learns most of the story from Lomax's friend, former comrade in arms Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård), but it's down to Lomax to banish his demons, especially once he learns his chief torturer escaped justice and is still living, apparently happily, giving tours of the camp where he meted out his punishment.  Thus Lomax returns to the scene of his incarceration and abuse, seeking out Nagase in an attempt to let go of a lifetime of bitterness and hate.

Firth as the older Lomax and Jeremy Irvine as his wartime self are both excellent in their roles, the latter especially so in the difficult scenes of torture and interrogation. Hiroyuki Sanada brings dignity and restraint to the role of Nagase, but both Kidman and Skarsgård are poor and bafflingly miscast.  The film also lags a little in places as it jumps between the wartime scenes and the modern day, but that aside, it’s a well played and throughtful film.   

As the story deals so heavily with suffering and revenge there are some powerful moments, particularly our first introduction to Lomax's post-traumatic stress disorder; his horrified and horrifying "flashback" to the work camp while on his Scottish honeymoon. The scenes where he is beaten and waterboarded are especially difficult to watch, but it gives context to the decades of anger and pain that he later represses.

The Railway Man depicts a case of truth and reconciliation before such attitudes became the accepted way of coping with unspeakable human-rights violations. Lomax found heroism in compassion and forgiveness, and that attitude is what audiences are bound to connect with on a deep level. 

For those still alive that have some link to the war against the Japanese, this movie will be hard to deal with, yet it also offers a plea for forgiveness and understanding. If films have the power to heal old wounds, this one will surely do so.

The last stanza, where Lomax comes face to face with his captor is as traumatic for Nagase as for Eric. But it is accomplished with a touching serenity, without histrionics or fireworks. 

These moments, fittingly, are the most moving of all as they show the sacred power of forgiveness, evidenced by Lomax’s realisation that, ‘sometimes, the hating has to stop’.  

By Martin Barratt

The Railway Man
Genre: Drama
Director:  Jonathan Teplitzky
Rating: M (violence)
Run time: 1 hour 56 mins