7/3/2023 0 Comments The railway man eric lomax![]() ![]() There's such grace to her, I found, but she's very quiet and I loved the challenge of that and how the film shows how standing by someone and loving them can be a powerful tool for healing. I wanted to do as much as I could in a very small amount of screen time and somehow do justice to her and – you should block your ears, Patti – to her incredibly elegant and quiet determination. LF: Was it daunting playing a living person? You've played historical figures before, of course. I watched it quite a few times, actually. NK: It was when Eric was still alive, but unbeknown to Patti I'd studied her because she did a long interview with Andy – hours and hours of footage where he talked to her. NK: I did go camping in very high temperatures, which is not recommended. He makes me laugh': Kidman with Colin Firth in The Railway Man. The film climaxes with the older Lomax confronting the Japanese interpreter who watched over his torture. Structurally, the story switches back and forth between what happened to Lomax during the war (where he is played by Jeremy Irvine) and years later when Lomax (played by Firth), suffering from what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder, forced himself with Patti's gentle encouragement to deal with the past. Now the Australian director Jonathan Teplitzky, working with a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce, has adapted The Railway Man into a film starring Colin Firth as Lomax and Nicole Kidman as his wife, Patti. David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was inspired by events during the railway's construction and, perhaps because that film casts such a long shadow, there have been relatively few films since that deal with this particular episode of second-world-war horror. Along with his fellow prisoners, Lomax, a lifelong railway buff, was forced to participate in the construction of the Burma Railway, which cost the lives of more than 100,000 forced labourers and prisoners of war. Not what Eric Lomax deserves read the book instead."S ome time the hating has to stop." So concludes the memoir The Railway Man, the late Eric Lomax's remarkable account of how he survived torture and extreme deprivation during his time as a prisoner of war in Thailand under Japanese rule. The result is neutered, plodding and dull. Everything about The Railway Manreeks of compromise and a mealy-mouthed attempt to please a mythical demographic who like movies about war, but can’t handle too much death and destruction. As well as the top-notch cast, screenwriting duties are performed by Liverpool’s own Frank Cottrell Boyce who has penned some of the best British movies of recent years, as well as the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony.īut something has definitely gone awry here and this critic would put money on interference from the money-men. That a film about the fundamentals of the human condition could fall so strangely flat and be devoid of emotion is one of the mysteries of the movie business. ![]() These scenes should have been gripping but were, instead, merely perfunctory as, for the most part, was the rest of the film. The war scenes form a shaky bridge to the final third of the film in which Lomax heads to Thailand to meet his torturer, initially with a view to killing him. Due to lacklustre direction and what seems like a lack of budget, the film never captures the sweaty desperation of jungle PoW camps as in films such as Rescue Dawn, The Deer Hunter and, of course, the definitive Death Railway film, Bridge Over The River Kwai. Unfortunately, it is during Irvine’s wartime scenes that the film fails to convince. A special mention must go, also, to Jeremy Irvine (best known for playing young Albert in Spielberg’s sugary War Horse) who is excellent as a young Colin Firth. The cast are solid and the burgeoning romance between Patti (Nicole Kidman) and Eric (Colin Firth) are the best in the film. But this film adaptation, though not terrible, falls short of doing the tale justice. It’s an astounding and inspiring true story, and Lomax’s own memoir is something I’d recommend to anyone. Persuaded by his new wife, Patti, to confront his former abuser, Lomax managed to not only forgive the man but to become his friend. ![]() Discovery of this radio led to Lomax being tortured by the Japanese security forces and he came close to death.ĭecades later, relocating from his native Edinburgh to Berwick upon Tweed, Lomax read in a newspaper that one of his torturers had converted to Buddhism and was now leading tours of the Death Railway for tourists. While on the railway, Lomax constructed a small transistor radio so he and his fellow prisoners might receive news of the war. Captured by the Japanese in 1942, Eric Lomax was sent to Kanchanaburi, Thailand where he and his fellow PoWs were forced to build the notorious Burma Railway which claimed over 100,000 lives. ![]()
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