Railway Man, The (2013) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Drama

Academy Award Winners Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman star in the remarkable autobiography of Eric Lomax (Colin Firth), a British Army officer who is captured by the Japanese during WWII and sent to a POW camp, where he is tormented and forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. Decades later, still suffering the trauma of his wartime experiences, Lomax and his wife Patti (Nicole Kidman) discover that the Japanese interpreter responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and set out to confront him, in this powerful and inspiring tale of heroism, humanity and the redeeming power of love.

Storyline: Eric Lomax was one of thousands of Allied prisoners of war forced to work on the construction of the Thai/Burma railway during WW2. His experiences, after the secret radio he built to bring news and hope to his colleagues was discovered, left him traumatised and shut off from the world. Years later, he met Patti, a beautiful woman, on a train and fell in love. Patti was determined to rid Eric of his demons. Discovering that the young Japanese officer who haunted her husband was still alive, she faced a terrible decision. Should Eric be given a chance to confront his tormentor? Would she stand by him, whatever he did? Written by Anonymous

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, August 4, 2014 -- The Railway Man is the sort of movie that movies were made for. Here's a story that gets to the essence of man as shaped by the dueling sides of conflict. It's about not simply the physical pain in the moment of war but the resultant emotional turmoil that can linger and simmer through the years and evolve into more than bad memories, morphing into something that manifests in the physical in any number of ways: depression, a nearly crazed lust for revenge, a search for answers, a quest for reconciliation, some odd combination of all of the above that can reduce a man to nothing, even with the greatest support he could ever hope to have. Director Jonathan Teplitzky's (Burning Man) The Railway Man, based on the true story as told in the book of the same name, is an instant classic that speaks on the horrors of war, the haunting memories that reduce a man to nothing, and the power of forgiveness to overcome even the worst tragedies that may befall a man in time of war, war that is both physical conflict and the inner struggles that are a result of it.

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) meets, falls in love with, and marries Patti (Nicole Kidman). Their picture-perfect relationship soon faces its first real challenge when Eric suffers an attack of his post-traumatic stress disorder, sending him into convulsions and leaving his wife in search of answers. With her help, and that of his friend and fellow former prisoner of war, Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård), Eric sets out to set right a number of past wrongs. As he does so, the film flashes back to his imprisonment under the Japanese flag in World War II and the hard labor and torture he endured throughout his stay in the camp.

Though comparisons between The Railway Man and The Bridge on the River Kwai are rightly inevitable, the two are largely incongruous beyond their shared setting. Whereas the William Holden classic blends together fragments of the human toll on World War II labor camp prisoners of war, The Railway Man makes that human toll the primary focus, eschewing action and any other bits of surrounding drama for a much more intimate, personal, haunting, and ultimately satisfying journey of interpersonal conflict resolution engendered by unspeakable suffering at the vicious hands of the ravages of war.

The picture captures, first, the innermost devastation of what is, in essence, a classic case of post-traumatic stress disorder of the highest level. It opens with a haunting aural overlay that gives way to a gently developed and heartfelt romance that is broken in an instant by the sudden onset of inner duress manifest in the physical. Eric Lomax transforms from loving husband into a man completely unrecognizable, writhing in physical agony on the floor, inwardly reliving the worst moments of his life even as life's best moments now greet him with every morning rise. The film is a startling display of contrast, of beauty and terror, wherein true love and friendship struggle to reconnect with a man becoming evermore lost to his past, a victim of unspeakably deep emotional scars that, within the confines of his safety net, prove impossible to heal.

The Railway Man is beautifully photographed, so much so that the gently flowing, intimate, captivating photography often plays in stark contrast to both the physical brutality playing out on the screen during the flashbacks and the inward terror that underlines most every scene in the present. It makes for an unusually intoxicating blend of emotional pleasure and pain, which only reinforces those same ideas and values that are placed on display with much intensity for the duration. The film perfectly conveys both ends of the spectrum with a chilling simplicity that favors subtle camera movement and tight focus to expose characters' innermost feelings while at the same time frequently pulling back for a greater, sweeping vista that offers another interesting juxtaposition, one of how even great agony can feel distant and even, almost, insignificant against a larger picture of the world.

The film is, further, wonderfully acted. Colin Firth is both verbally and physically poetic in the lead role, portraying a man ravaged by the complexities of countering emotions of love and hate, of acceptance and rejection, of freedom and fear, of certainty and doubt, of the conflict building inside him between the need to move on and the need to revisit the past, pushed forward by the incessant hands of time and building within him to the point of breaking him. Firth commands the moment in every scene, building a fully convincing character in every stage, a range that includes a train hobbyist and a shy lover all the way to a broken man and a seeker of both revenge and resolution in the story's building moments and final act. He's surrounded by several quality performances, including those from Jeremy Irvine as a younger Eric, Nicole Kidman as his wife, and Stellan Skarsgård as a lifelong friend and fellow former prisoner of war. Perhaps no other performance, beyond Firth's, is so powerfully emotional as that of Hiroyuki Sanada as the elder Takashi Nagase; his final on-camera moments define the movie to perfection.

The Railway Man is frequently difficult to watch, but it's one of the most rewarding cinema experiences of the past several years. The film's portrayal of a broken man is a runaway success, featuring a once-in-a-lifetime performance by Colin Firth. The film is dramatically weighty and emotionally heavy, and even as it builds to a rather predictable resolution, the journey feels nearly as harsh as that which must have been experienced by Eric Lomax himself. The picture is sumptuously crafted and exquisitely performed. It's one of 2013's finest films and one of 2014's best Blu-ray releases. Perfect video and audio are flanked by two quality supplements. The Railway Man earns my highest recommendation.


[CSW] -3.8- I couldn't say it any better than the reviewer that said "A remarkable illustration of the human capacity to find peace through forgiveness. A quiet, contemplative drama about the war after war. Lomax found heroism in compassion, and that attitude is what audiences are bound to connect with so deeply here, even if such an outcome proves almost anti-dramatic onscreen. It's not easy to play an uncommunicative character in a medium that is all about communication, but nobody does so better than Firth. You'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be moved by this tale's final destination, even if the route there is somewhat circuitous. Lomax's act of forgiveness is unforgettable, and commendably not over-simplified here. An incredible tale of love, courage and humanity - and their opposites - the story of Eric Lomax sounds like it was dreamed up in a Hollywood melodrama workshop. But it's true."
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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