Explore the film locations of The Railway Man. “The Railroad Man” is an earnest and well-crafted film that tells its little-known story with an honesty that resonates today with our own returning warriors.A powerful tale of survival, love and redemption. Jeremy Irvine is well cast as the younger Eric and his treatment under Nagose is stomach churning with its graphic depictions of torture. Nicole Kidman’ s Patti is a relatively minor character but the actress gives her some dimension, as does Stellan Skarsgard as Finley. Colin Firth is sympathetic as elder Eric as he confronts his past. “The Railway Man” is a powerful look at that disorder and how it profoundly affected those forced to survive unthinkable suffering. But, the disorder has been around since man began to war with man. When we think of PTSD, we do so in modern terms, as if it is a recent discovery. Eric refuses to go to Burma to confront Nagase when a terrible event changes his mind and he makes the journey, alone. That is, until Finley uncovers evidence that Eric’s tormentor, Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada), is alive and well and runs a tourist business for visits to the Burma railway site. The visions of the war set the stage for the real drama of “The Railway Man” as Eric tries to cope, unsuccessfully, with his demons as Patti helplessly watches. What transpires is a story of heroism and suffering, by Eric, inflicted by Japanese translator-turned-torturer Takeshi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida). He and fellow officers use their relative freedom to pilfer parts to build a secret radio to get the war news, bringing hope to all. Eric, a young lieutenant and engineer, is given slightly better treatment than the tens of thousands laboring as slaves building the railroad. This period is the focus of the film as Eric and the rest must succumb to the torture inflicted on them by the Japanese. The filmmakers use flash backs telling Eric’s story, from just before the surrender to the end of the war after his liberation in 1945. Reluctantly, he tells her Eric’s story under the brutal hands of his Japanese captors. The worried wife wants to help and turns to Eric’s longtime best friend and fellow ex-POW, Finley (Stellan Skarsgard). Soon, though the wedded bliss is shattered when Patti sees that her husband suffers from a severe case of PTSD from his terrible experiences during the war. The story starts out some 20 years after the war with Eric and Patti falling in love and getting married. The POWs from the fall were shipped off to Burma to build the railroad that could not be built. Lomax was one of the 80000 British soldiers to surrender, in what is called the worst disaster in British military history, in the fall of Singapore. Director Jonathan Teplitzky and writers Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson adapt the 1995 autobiography by Eric Lomax, The Railway Man, and bring to light a piece of WWII suffering that few are familiar with.
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