‘The Railway Man’ from director Jonathan Teplitzky stars Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Hiroyuki Sanada and Jeremy Irvine and is based on Eric Lomax’s (Colin Firth) autobiography. It is a moving POW movie and a touching love story adapted by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson that celebrates the healing power of forgiveness and ultimately, reconciliation.

Through the years, Hollywood movies about POW’s have been a solid staple. Some of the most memorable; The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Deer Hunter (1979), Schindler’s List (1993) are all Best Picture Oscar winning films. These and numerous others have explored, in one way or another, the psychological trauma of incarceration during war. In most cases with war prisoners, international law is flouted and victims are brutalized physically and psychologically beyond comprehensible limits. These dramatic stories bulge with conflict and the opportunity to illustrate the worst and best of humanity. These films have served as a great tool both for historical and ethical instruction. These traumatic and very personally humiliating events are stories that the victims rarely talk about. Not surprisingly, the remedy and reconciliation so badly needed in these circumstances starts by telling the victim’s stories to those who need to hear it.

Lomax (Colin Firth), a bookish railway enthusiast, meets recently widowed Patricia Wallace (Nicole Kidman) on a train. Recognizing he has fallen in love, he pursues and marries Patricia. Their romance is quickly interrupted when Patricia becomes witness to Lomax’s nightmares, the devastating effects of his hallucinations, his severe depression and suicidal thoughts. She gets Eric’s friend Findaly (Stellan Skarsgård) to reveal Lomax’s POW experience during WWII when he was held captive in the deep jungle of Thailand as a slave on the Thailand-Burma ‘Death Railway’. There POW’s served as slaves in the construction of a strategic railway, part of Japan’s imperial objective. Flashbacks show Lomax (Jeremy Irvine), an engineer bravely resisting his captors to save his mates and being ruthlessly tortured. Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada) an officer and translator is his tormentor and the subject of Lomax’s disabling, vengeful thoughts and the incessant nightmares that continue to dog Lomax years later.

Director Teplitzky ably moves his narrative between the prison camp flashbacks and the present day romance, utilizing trigger images superimposed on the present landscape. Kidman is sufficiently made down to match a superb and convincing performance as the doting but forcefully determined Mrs. Lomax. Firth as the elder Lomax is spot on carrying a very elastic set of emotions, from a charming bumbler to a nerve wracked psychotic on the edge, never losing the consistency of his character. A surprise is Jeremy Irvine as the young Lomax. We are definitely predisposed as an audience to this seemingly frail and vulnerable individual who proves to have an indomitable courage worthy of the best screen heroes. Irvine communicates so well with the eyes and body inflection. His performance reinforces the fact that his early critical successes are no fluke (Warhorse, Great Expectations). Credit to both Firth and Irvine as the temporal switch is carried off seamlessly. Of particular note too is the lighting, invoking almost a black and white set of hues in the most dramatic prison camp scenes, and along with the set design, circumstantially conjures up the miserable situation for the POWs; humiliation, fear in isolation and a totally uncertain future.

A gala film at TIFF13 in Toronto, this timely movie is highly recommended in a world still wracked with wars and the threat of war.

Alfredo Romano