It strives for balance, and to be respectful.
It’s much less gung-ho and less theatrical than The Bridge Over The River Kwai. The cast are all good (and indeed it has nominations in the Australian awards, being an Australian co-production). The film is instructive, elevating perhaps, but it certainly lacks “entertainment” value. So … why did the dismissive reviews range from half-hearted to poor? The camp scenes are deeply harrowing, there is no “action” (torture lacks drama when there’s no chance of escape) and the romance is over very early on.
The endnotes tell us they became friends. He started a Buddhist shrine (at least in the book) and shows remorse. Nagase worked on the war graves commission, identifying the tens of thousands murdered on the railway. But Nagase survived the war because of his ability to interpret, and so was not arrested like other guards, nor hanged as a war criminal … a fate they all richly deserved. Eric has to go to meet Nagase, intending to kill him. He has found out that Nagase, the translator, and a participant in the torture, is not only alive, but a tour guide showing people round the surviving camps on the railway. Nicole Kidman as the wife, persuades Finlay, who was in the camp with Eric, to start revealing the story. Much more than half the film is the later 1980s period. My dad was one of the first batch of troops liberating Belsen and my mother said he suffered nightmares until his early death in 1966, and that was seeing it, let alone being a victim. However he is haunted by memory and suffering nightly traumas and flashbacks to the railway. It starts around 1980 when he meets a woman (played by Nicole Kidman), falls in love, marries … a pleasant romantic twenty minutes of screen time. The true story is about Eric Lomax, a railway enthusiast, traumatized by his experiences on the Death Railway. It is “Based on a True Story.” What happened to fiction? Every major film seems to be based on a true story. And that question of when or if you can forget, let alone forgive, is the subject of the film. Even so, Prince Philip, who served in that theatre of war, was right to avoid a situation where he might have had to shake hands with Hirohito. Japan is my favourite country of those I’ve visited. The locomotive used to be outside when I was there, now it’s in the war museum. The Bridge on the River Kwai, the plucky Brits, Dutch and Aussies whistling Colonel Bogey railway. Among it all is the first steam engine to travel the Thailand- Burma Railway. 1000 of them are convicted war criminals, 14 are Category A war criminals. It’s a monument to 2.5 million soldiers, who having died in action, are now regarded as deities. The best cure for jet lag is a walk in the fresh air so I’d wander there from the Grand Palace hotel before breakfast. Years ago I used to stay near the Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo. Jeremy Irvine as the young Eric Lomax in WWII. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce & Andy Paterson
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