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Colin Firth is haunted by the past in The Railway Man |
Director: Jonathan Teplitzky
Cast: Colin Firth (Eric Lomax), Nicole Kidman (Patricia
Lomax), Stellan Skarsgård (Finlay), Hiroyuki Sanada (Takashi Nagase), Jeremy
Irvine (Young Eric Lomax), Sam Reid (Young Finlay), Tanroh Ishida (Young
Takashi Nagase)
There is perhaps nothing harder to do in life than to put
the past behind you and forgive. We all seem to be hot wired to want revenge
and to seek it against all odds. It’s rare indeed the man who learns to put the
rage against the past behind him and to extend the hand of friendship.
Such a man was Eric Lomax (played here by Colin Firth). In
the 1970s Eric meets and falls in love with Patricia (Nicole Kidman). The two
are married, but Patricia soon discovers Eric is still plagued by memories of
his imprisonment as a young man (played by Jeremy Irvine) by the Japanese
during the Second World War, and in particular a prolonged period he spent
being tortured by the Japanese secret police for building a radio. Lomax is
unable to begin to talk about his experiences, even as trauma causes his life
to deteriorate. Fellow ex-POW Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård – very good in a small but
vital role) is the only one who has even the faintest idea of his experience,
but cannot persuade him to even speak about his past or try and move on. After
discovering his torturer Takashi Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada) is alive and well and
working as a tourist guide in the very camp where Lomax was tortured, he
travels to Japan, torn about what he should do.
Teplitzy’s film is powered by several marvellous
performances, not least Colin Firth who is excellent in the lead role as the
deeply repressed, tormented Lomax who in his heart has never left the prison
where he suffered unbelievable torment. The film is a carefully structured, and
deeply moving, character study of how atrocious and inhumane actions trap us
all – both the victims and perpetrators – in patterns of suffering where we
feel our own humanity drain away. Even handed, honest and generous, like
Lomax’s book, it’s an engaging and moving tribute to the strength of the human
spirit and our capacity for generosity.
Not least because when we finally meet the aged Nagase, he
is far from the monster we expected. Like Lomax he too is haunted by the past,
but where Lomax cannot escape the horrors he suffered, Nagase is plagued by
guilt and disgust as he realises his actions as a young man were far from those
of a righteous soldier, but rather a brainwashed pawn in a brutal army. Nagase,
like Lomax, is desperate to purge himself of memories of this past, and has
worked his whole life to try and make amends for the suffering he has caused.
No simple good guys and bad guys here – both torturer and tortured are
dehumanised, scarred and traumatised by the actions they have carried out.
Teplitzky films that torture with an unflinching honesty,
that leaves you in no doubt about why it has had such impact on Lomax. Jeremy
Irvine is very good as the young Lomax, scared, vulnerable but brave and
self-sacrificing who puts himself in the way of danger to try and protect his
friends and then goes through savage beatings, interrogations and water
boarding for information he doesn’t have. It’s difficult to watch, but never
sensationalised and the traumatic pointlessness of these methods is abundantly
clear.
These memories, slowly revealed, are all too apparent in any
case in Firth’s blasted face. The film
slowly reveals his psychological damage, with the opening sequence in fact
suggesting a far lighter film ahead. The opening follows the meeting of Lomax
and Patricia on a chance train journey. Playful and charming, these scenes work
so well due to the wonderful chemistry between Firth and Kidman. It plays off
in spadeas the plot gets darker and more disturbing. Kidman is very easy to
overlook here in the “wife” role, but she invests it with an emotional honesty,
a supportive woman eventually driven to the edge of her capabilities.
After the lightness of the opening, Terplitzky introduces
the past literally like ghosts, with Lomax caught in a sudden delusion of
himself being dragged through the hotel on his honeymoon, screaming in panic,
to be carried to his torture danger. Throughout the film, the image of his
torturer as a young man appears at various points (including at one point in a
field as a train passes behind him), a constant reminder of how the past is
here and now for Lomax.
It builds towards a sensational series of scenes as Lomax
confronts Nagase, powered by two exceptional performances from Firth (barely
able to control his anger, rage and pain) and a beaten down, distressed
performance of shame from Hiroyuki Sanada, who matches him step for step.
Sanada is superb as a man who confronts his nightmare – a man from his past –
but also overwhelmed with the opportunity this gives him for amends.
That’s what the film captures so well. This tension between
past and present encapsulates the universal theme of our desire for revenge and
our human need to connect coming together. Lomax and Nagase had every reason to
kill each other, but their reaction to seeing each other is surprising, moving
and a deep tribute to the human capacity to connect and move on. Grief and the
past will destroy us all if we let it. The heroic examples of both Lomax and
Nagase show us this doesn’t need to be the case.
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