The Railway Man is thoroughly well made and pretty faultlessly performed by its leads but for such a classic World War Two story it's surely a little too late in the day. 'The Railway Man', by Eric Lomax, is his memoirs of his experiences in World War II, as well as his life before and after the war. “Neither do I, I have suffered too”, says Nagase and they embrace: “Some time the hating has to stop.” It’s a story about PTSD though from a time before it was called that and an urge for revenge that turns into a desire for reconciliation and forgiveness. Firths performance is filled with anger and revenge. The Railway Man is not a sweet little romance. And the cathartic final truth and reconciliation meeting between Lomax and Nagase is inevitably moving: “I don’t want to live that day any more”, says Lomax. This is very much a personal story of how love, courage and forgiveness can heal, and its hard not to be moved by Lomaxs harrowing story. On one of his frequent train trips, he meets and falls in love with. Read full review 25 Kyle Smith I think I’d rather have the waterboarding than the movie’s bromides about how we’re all victims and hate must end. Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) is a self proclaimed railway enthusiast, not just a train spotter. ![]() Since this is a film all about not being able to escape the past and live in the present, how the two are integrated is a crucial decision – and the solution adopted by the director Jonathan Teplitsky and screenwriters Frank Cotterell Boyce and Andy Patterson feels too safe and ready-made.Īs the young Eric, Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) is excellent, with a hopefulness and openness that are gone from him after his ordeal. The Railway Man is such a safe, respectful portrait of true-life catharsis that it feels afraid to reopen the same old wounds it exalts Lomax for confronting. ![]() This parallel track ends up dissipating the tension of both past and present and giving us too easy a perspective – it might have been better either to have stuck strictly to chronology, neither leaping forward nor back, or even to have reversed it completely and begun with the end and then gone backwards. The film progresses by the unimaginative device of alternately progressively revealing Lomax’s wartime experiences in flashback and carrying forward the story in the present, until the two meet in the final scenes of reconciliation.
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