Blood on the tracks
This tale of torture and redemption is powerfully restrained, writes Sue de Groot
ERIC Lomax, who died in 2012 at the age of 93, was that most endearing of creatures — a man who loved trains. “I’m not a trainspotter,” he (or rather Colin Firth, who plays him) is at pains to point out. “I’m a railway enthusiast.”
Being called a trainspotter was the least painful thing in Lomax’s life. Captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in World War 2, he survived extreme torture. His subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder might now be better treated, but this was a time when men, especially British men, were expected to get on with their lives and not grumble. Were it not for the intervention of his second wife, Patti, whom he met on a train, he may never have talked about it.
In 1995, Lomax published his book, The Railway Man, a horrifically detailed account of what was done to him by the Japanese and the emotional trauma that followed. He achieved a sort of catharsis by returning to the notorious concentration camp Changi (which had by then become a tourist destination) and confronting his demons.
The film leaves out the fact that Lomax was married before and that he left his first wife to be with Patti. Including these details, and his estrangement from his daughters, might have made the story even more poignant, but only a miniseries could do justice to the entire life of Lomax.
As it is, the film is powerful because of its restraint. The agonies inflicted on prisoners are felt without showing every vicious detail. Older Lomax’s internal struggles are evident in every impotently angry blink of Firth’s brown eyes, in every nightmare flashback to the darkened doorway he must enter again to find healing. His wife’s devotion is tenderly administered by Nicole Kidman, whose career might yet survive the catastrophe that was Grace of Monaco.
As young Eric, actor Jeremy Irvine is magnificent. He is the essence of British bravura, a noble, nerdy engineer with the heart of a lion. After Lomax’s daughter Charmaine saw the film, she told The Guardian: “Irvine is so like my dad it’s uncanny. What I saw for the first time was the man Dad should have been, the man he would have been if he hadn’t suffered in the terrible way that he did.”
Even at its truth-commission-like climax, The Railway Man avoids sentimentality and moralising. It is a deeply compassionate film about how hard it is to forgive those who caused you harm, and how liberating it might be to try. LS degroots@sundaytimes.co.za Twitter @deGrootS1