Synopsis
Starring Colin Firth as Eric Lomax, a railway engineer and enthusiast who meets and marries Patti (Nicole Kidman). His post traumatic stress attacks prompt (Nicole Kidman) into delving into his wartime experiences in the Far East. His friend (Stellan Skarsgård) tells about their ordeal in the Japanese prison camp where they worked on the River Kwai railway. Because they had a radio they were tortured by the Japanese Kempai secret police. The translator Nadase is played by Hiroyuki Sanada (older) and Tanroh Ishida (younger). Colin Firth wants revenge as he tracks down the Kempai’s translator who was involved in his torture.
Review
I spent nearly four years teaching in China and whilst there I did not learn as much as I could have wished about its Second World War history where over ten million Chinese died as a result of the Japanese invasion. How many films have we seen about that? Empire of the Sun ??!! As for Britain and Japan we’ve had Tenko, A Town like Alice, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, and of course the laughable Bridge on the River Kwai. That the suffering of one hundred thousand people who died in the building of the railway should be reduced to an absurd fable about the eastern and western mind, that the colonel in charge of the British should effectively become a traitor for working for the Japanese, what did these soldiers make of this travesty?
Eric Lomax and his fellow engineers suffered in the building of the railway (railway construction has always been slave work). Lomax brings the expected stoical dignity to the part. He initially seeks revenge but in a coldly methodical way, and in trying to do so he learns forgiveness, ending up interogating himself as much as he does Nagase. Nagase eventually achieves a kind of redemption. The Railway Man looks as if it’s prepared to ask questions around these subjects, and of the nature of the war, but since it’s too big for its alllotted time it can’t do more than hint in the second half of the film.
How remorseful was Nagase, what effect did this interrogation have on his conscience? In The Railway Man it looks too compressed, it quickly goes through the motions, it really needed an entire film on that meeting alone. Patti plays her part with ascetic British decency but one wanted to know more about her.
jkinsleyfilm 