The Railway Man

Seen at the Gala Cinema in Durham

Bea says:  I have family history connected with the plot of this film as according to family stories a great uncle of mine died on a hospital ship coming home after being a POW working on the Burma railway, so I was particularly interested in seeing it.  There is a book associated with the film which I have not read, so the story of the quiet, somewhat repressed and very British Eric Lomax was new to me.  But this film was as much about a marriage - and about the overall experience of that wartime generation - as it was about the Burma railway.

The film opens with a charming set of scenes - on a British train - which document Eric (Colin Firth) meeting his wife Patti (Nicole Kidman), but I will let Cecil say more about that as I know these scenes were a highlight for him.  But as is the way with all good plots, things do not remain quite so rosy, and soon we are witness to Eric's post traumatic stress as the memories of his wartime experiences after the fall of Singapore affect him constantly, and we are told the story in flashback as Patti, and Eric's wartime friends, try to help him move on.

It is a terrible story, although I am sure the writers and producers did not in any way reveal the full horror of the abuse and torture that actually went on (for a start the film would have had to be certificate 18 if they did) - things I have read and documentaries I've watched about the Burma railway indicate just how bad it was, and Lomax himself says at one point - "we don't talk about it because no one would believe it".  I am glad they didn't, as what we saw was harrowing enough for me, although very sobering because one of the techniques (waterboarding) is still in use today by so-called "civilised" nations. A clue to just had bad things were was the character of the The Major - starved, trembling, and totally cowed by the Japanese forces.

A few key scenes: I will never be able to watch Brief Encounter again without wanting to shout "give her one, Trevor" - one of the few laughs in this sober film; I was rather surprised to hear that the reason that the British never built the Burma railway while they were in power was because it would be too cruel (hmmm - more likely that it would be an engineering nightmare I suspect...a slight airbrushing of the colonial past I think); and whilst I found the scenes of the reconciliation between Eric and the interpreter who played a significant role in his torture very moving indeed (particularly in remembering the key message of our last film - Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom) I found myself feeling somewhat uncomfortable by the statement that "they became great friends", and really wanting to understand the psychology behind that - but I suspect that says more about me and where I am in my overall life development.  Perhaps I need to get older, and less angry.

Excellent, excellent performances, writing, directing and producing - sadly there are a lot of good runners for the awards this year and this quiet film might just miss out.

****1/2

Cecil says: I liked this film, too, though I had no personal reference point for the story. It did, however, make me aware that most Brits' association with the subject has been shaped by that 1950s classic The Bridge over the River Kwai. You could almost blame David Lean for focusing our national minds on the bridge alone, not realising that there was a much larger picture, and a much longer railway being built then.

As Bea says, I did enjoy the opening scenes.

The very first shot is actually of Lomax lying prostrate on the floor reciting the very evocative poem he apparently wrote himself (and it gets a repeat during his torture later in the film) about time and clocks and life, or death.

But we then switch to his very entertaining chat-up lines for Patti on the west coast train line as they head through Warrington and up towards Preston. Anyone from that part of the country has to see this film, just for that opener.

Firth and Kidman are fantastic throughout, though I couldn't help reflecting on the age of their characters and then on their own ages as actors, which slightly distracted me through the film. Lomax is supposed to be over 60 by the time the film is set in 1980, though Firth never quite manages to look that old; and similar for Patti and Kidman, who looked a tad too fresh-faced even for a younger partner to Lomax.

My other misgiving relates a little to what Bea referred to: the slightly sanitised view of the whole railway/torture/slave labour conditions. I couldn't tell if it was the pristine nature and glorious width of the Gala cinema's screen in Durham, or the way it was all filmed, but I did feel throughout that I was watching this film rather than part of it, so I felt just slightly detached.

There were very moving scenes, though many of those moments were more associated with the struggles in contemporary life rather than the actual traumas of the wartime period.

By funny coincidence I had to do four hours of hard manual labour the day after watching this film. It was the first time I had done such physical work since I worked on a farm during the summer of 1978. And my body ached afterwards. Nothing, though, compared to being whipped and beaten while digging in hard rock for 14 hours a day in captivity. As Bea says, it is the English Major who best encapsulates how the body and mind would wilt under that sort of pressure.

And maybe the feel of witnessing rather than being part of the hard labour actually stems from the fact that Lomax was indeed lucky enough to be am engineer, so he avoided the hard labour because he was needed by the Japs to help build the lines?

****